Difference between a Hub site and the new Home Site setting?

[alandarr]

I have a Hub site which is the main landing for our intranet (under construction). Several Communication sites are associated with it. I recently read in an email that a new option is available called Home Site which is explained here https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/SharePoint/home-site .

I guess I'm not understanding the difference between the two. The Hub/Communication site that we use already has the functions that are mentioned in the link above. Can anyone explain why I would want to set up the Home Site option?

[#2 · Accepted solution]

Hi @alandarr ,

From the official release about Home Sites:-

5. What is the difference between a hubs and home site?

a) Hubs and Home sites are added functionalities to our two modern site types Team and Communication.

A hub is used organize sites with a shared theming, navigation, search and news roll ups.

A home site serves as the top level portal with unique functionality like special SP mobile treatment, organizational news, tenant wide search, integration with SP start page, etc.

Biggest thing I see is that clicking on your company logo anywhere in Office 365 takes you to your Home site. A home site is traditional what you would call your Intranet.  You can turn a Hub into a Home site. You can only have one home site. 

[#3]

I wasn't sure if my Hub site could be the Home Site. Seems like that would be the thing to do.
Thanks for that info!

[#4]

@alandarr 
I've posted my issue down below .. but if you have a simple intranet in which the Home site is a hub site, and all your departmental sites connect to this home site, then you are able to take advantage of this Global Navigation Menu.
But because a hub cannot connect to a hub; and a larger intranet site might have several hubs (with each hub having several connected sites), then you cannot leverage what would be a very nice feature. Instead you've got to find a way to replicate a global menu as the hub menu for all of your 10-20 hub sites. If someone has created this in PowerShell, i'd really appreciate them posting the code.