What Vertical portal is
A portal that caters to consumers within a particular industry (sometimes called a "vertical industry"). Vertical portals, also called "vortals," use Internet technology to offer the same kind of personalization tools that portals do. Another kind of vortal caters solely to other businesses rather than to an industry's consumers. The B2C portal gave the B2B industry a model to work from, and now, most business-to-business sites bill themselves as portals. We like to define business-to-business sites as vertical portals because they deliver content and services focused on their particular niche. The term "portal" is getting muddied because although many sites call themselves portals they are, in fact, simply Web sites that use cookie and/or personalization technology (see: personalize).
The two essential components of a vertical portal are that it uses this kind of technology and caters to a specific industry. The two essential components of a regular portal are that it uses this kind of technology and provides a variety of news, media, and services.
The meaning of Server
A host computer on a network. It houses information and responds to requests for information (for example, it houses Web sites and executes their links to other Web sites). The term "server" also refers to the software that makes the act of "serving information" possible. Commerce servers, for example, use software to run the main functions of an e-commerce Web site, such as product display, online ordering, and inventory management (you'll also hear this described as shopping cart technology). A server is the control computer on a LAN, meaning it controls the software, access to printers, and other parts of the network (usually accompanied by workstations that "share the load"). A server may be dedicated (where its sole purpose is to be the server) or non-dedicated (where in addition to being the server, it can be used for basic computing purposes).