Portals seem to be a way for a non-programmer to create pages. All of the code will be generated by the Portal module based on settings the administrator customizes for each portal.
This reminds me again of Manila. It uses "macros" which allow you to display different features on a page. They are special codes that the admin of the site puts in the templates for the site.
It seems this idea should be built into (is it?) the CMS so a designer or whoever could just put in the hooks to the code into a page. Of course we don't want the admin even seeing the macros, they just want to build a page without learning to code, so:
Portals seems similar to the wizard idea aD had for the CMS. They could be a UI built on top of the CMS, or as an alternative to the current (or future) CMS interface.
