Wow, no reply within 2 minutes and you declare an emergency. I hope my response is not too late and everyone is still alive.

By definition, any question posted on these forums is neither urgent nor an emergency. These forums are user's forums where user's of the various JBoss technologies help each other out. They are not an official support mechanism, though Thomas and others on the Portal team graciously answer many of the questions posed. If you are in urgent need of support, RedHat and other companies will gladly provide you with a support contract for a fee. You can then get your urgent question answered promptly.

I suggest that you spend some time reading the Portal documentation - it is very good. Also, here is a discussion on learning how to do portlet development: http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&t=88554.

As far as the demo portlets go, those are sometimes in a state of flux and work on one combination of JBoss AS and Portal, and not on others. Search the forum, someone might have already have posted some resolutions to such issues.