Child portals are portals you create under the parent portal--the default DotNetNuke site of your DNN installation (you know, the one telling you what are the host & admin user names & passwords) is a parent portal.

When you create a new portal, there is an option for you to create a child portal or a parent portal. So far, all of the portals I've created are child portals under the main parent portal. And anything that works with the parent portal would work with the child portals. And you can have as many child portals as your resources allow.

What I don't know is how are parent portal and child portal different in terms of functions, and how many parent portals one can have in one DNN installation. But this is another question for another thread--probably gets better exposure with a different thread subject and therefore get answers more efficiently.

jc