Requesting assistance on installing GNOME2 via Ports on FreeBSD

Hello,

I have a rather antiquated PC, Pentium 4 (usually uses i386 kernels),
and I have installed FreeBSD successfully.  I prefer this and wish to
install GNOME2, but I have tried just about every command to make
config-recursive, make install, and even used portmaster and I always
end up with an Error code 1 during the Applets installation.  I'm
suspecting since I have an older FreeBSD version due to my hardware that
GNOME2 doesn't seem to work as well.  I am now using Debian with GNOME,
but wish not to use Debian.  Is it possible to download the newest
version of GNOME in a tar.gz and see if it works after I install
FreeBSD?  Or, if someone knows the best way to preconfigure the GNOME2
port before I run make install, that would be most helpful.  I prefer
GNOME over KDE any day and wish to use it.  Any ideas would be much
appreciated.  Thanks in advance.

Dante