In the default Sharepoint masterpage layout there are two places for breadcrumbs, a global portal breadcrumb at the very top and a local site collection breadcrumb navigation on the top of the page content area. This link shows up in the global portal breadcrumb path as a parent of the current site collection it's set on.

So for instance, if I have a web application with a default site collection at http://portal, the global breadcrumb at the top would just read "Portal".

If I create another site collection on that web application at http://portal/myCollection, that global breadcrumb will just display "myCollection", but in my organization it's just a departmental portal under the parent company so I want some way for my users to get back to the main site collection. So I can go to Site Actions > Site Settings > Site Collection Administration > Portal Site Connection and add the name and url of the parent site collection and now the bread portal breadcrumb path will display as "Portal > myCollection" with both linked appropriately.

Because this portal site connection link can be to any other site, I can have it point to a completely separate web app or even a completely different portal product. So maybe my Sharepoint portal is for one division of the company, but the overall corporate intranet is actually built in websphere. This could link to that.

Well, in SPPS 2003 there was a linkbutton on the righthand side of every page that said "Up to [Yourportalname]". I think this is where the two properties were used. Basically, the PortalUrl didn't have to be the URL of the same portal you were at.

I believe the properties are here in WSS3/MOSS to preserve compatibility with the previous portal.

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Something to be aware of is that the PortalUrl doesn't appear to pay attention to Alternate Access Mapping configurations. At least that's been my experience.

For instance, in the example of two site collections:

- //portal

- //portal/myCollection

You configure the //portal/myCollection to have a PortalUrl link back to the //portal site connection. All is fine and good.

Then you extend your web application to the extranet and set up an Alternate Access Mapping to http://portal.example.com . Where the PortalUrl break, in my opinion, is that for visitors to the extranet going to http://portal.example.com/myCollection they will see a breadcrumb portal link to //portal not http://portal.example.com.

In my opinion, AAMs should transform this URL.

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