Create a link to External Site in SharePoint Portal Nav

You can include navigation items to external sites on the SharePoint Portal Server main nav (Home, News, Topics etc) by doing the following

1. Click Manage Portal Site
2. Create a New Area, enter title, choose any template and Save. You will only get the option to select a template if you have changed the default properties of the Home Areas to allow Sub Areas to be based on any template
3. Click Save to save your new area.
4. Now click on the properties for your new area and select Edit
5. Click to the "Page" tab. Change the value in "Area Template" to "This Area uses the following page as a template" and enter the url of your choice - http://spsstuff.blogspot.com or http://www.msn.com etc. You might need to experiment with the url as to whether you need to end it with a "/" or not - as SharePoint would add the CatID querystring on click.

And you're done. You now have a link in the SharePoint top nav pointing to whereever you want it to.