I use a page from my hard disk created as a normal HTML page, giving all my links to my hard disk and to the pages I most often want to see elsewhere. But I can see there is an advantage in going immediately online to a page with todays harvest of new goodies that I ought to see - like the way that I check the front page of my favourite newspaper. Or switching on the Radio morning news. Some locals here have this set up as their portal. First thing every morning check the local news, local weather, local diary.
Some people have the homepage of their own website as their default.
There seem to be a great number of Portals. Some are for news and weather. Some are for searching. There are a range of portals also for Sports, Community, Entertainment, Money and Finance. Each carries banner advertising.