As soon as you start the implementation of SharePoint Portal Server, you will get confused regarding the usage of SharePoint Area and Topics. The similarity makes a newbie puzzled. After looking on the internet, this is best explanation I found, http://kjellsj.blogspot.com/2005/05/sharepoint-areas-and-topics-for.html

If you have installed SharePoint Portal Server on Windows 2003 Server after installing Service Pack 1, you may face problems in configuring the Single Sign On Service. You will get error like

"Failed to connect to the database server. Verify connectivity and rights for the configuration account and try again."

Thinking that problem is from my side, I spent a lot of time configuring the rights of the account but all in vain. Finally google came to the resuce and here is the link that solved my problem. Solution is a little bit weird but haaaay.. it worked.

Find the ImagePath registry entry at the following location:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Services\ssosrv
Remove the quotation strings from around the the ImagePath value ... and away you go.

Reference :Chris Johnson Blog :SharePoint SSO error and Window Server 2003 SP1

Customizing ONET.XML of MySite (SPSMSITE) template

In the template folder you will also find the default template for the MySite configuration. You might think this works in the same matter as the other templates, but no. Editing the default.aspx in the SPSMSITE folder has the same effect, but altering ONET.XML has no effect. This is due to the fact that Sharepoint creates the virtual site that handles all MySite sites on installation, thus only processing the ONET.XML in the SPSMSITE folder once. To alter the MySite template for all users on your portal use FrontPage and navigate to your RootSite/MySite, then perform your changes.

This inconsistency is kind of hard to spot, and reduces the possibility of preconfiguring the setup of a site before it is rolled out. Not much to do about that though.

Ref : http://weblogs.asp.net/mnissen/articles/68629.aspx

Great detailed post comparing the two
http://weblogs.asp.net/bsimser/archive/2006/01/31/437023.aspx http://aspadvice.com/blogs/rjdudley/archive/2006/01/18/14755.aspx