The whole "why do I need 'portal' twice in my URL?" question was discussed in detail in a topic some time ago. Unfortunately I can't seem to find it - using 'portal' as a search keyword is useless ;-) Anyway, if I recall correctly, the first 'portal' gets you into the portal container. The second 'portal' distinguishes the request between one for a portal page and something from the CMS ('/portla' vs '/content') If you really want to let you users use http://hostname:8080/jimmy, then create a jimmy.war containing an index.jsp that redirects to /portal/portal/jimmy. That's what I did for my portal. View the original post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&p=4204076#... Reply to the post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=posting&mode=reply&a...