Gestor061 thanks for your reply. Clearly EA is still lying to us as the Portal 101 guide says you can create Solo/Co-op versus all bot teams without all the extra programing.
Maybe EA will allow us to use Portal later as advertised at launch. Until then, I will not buy the game.
One way for an "easy fix" is to allow all guns, attachments and gadgets be unlocked for Solo/Co-op versus all bots team when playing that created game/server ("this is what Call of Duty does on custom Solo v Bot match games"). I don't care about XP, but I know others do.