If you manually update the PortalAlias you need to restart the web app to clear the settings from cache.

More info about Portal Alias can be found here:

http://blogs.snapsis.com/PermaLink,guid,87c379cc-c700-4eb8-a48d-e778aeef65fa.aspx

The easiest way to move from production to localhost is to make sure there is an alias setup for the portal before moving it.

You can do this by logging in as the host super user and going to the site settings page. The Http Alias input is at the bottom.

The alias entry should look like this --  localhost/virtualdir -- (forward slash seperator, and no http:// on the front)

After that you can find out if it is the alias that is causing the redirect or some other problem by installing Fiddler to monitor what is happening.

As a side note: Putting the orginal site into your HOSTS file and pointing to 127.0.0.1 will also work. I like to do this myself, but it is a little more advanced and you have to make sure to switch it back, or you won't know why you can't get to the production site, so I don't advise it for most people.

If you use the HOSTS file on your local machine you will also need to make sure your default website has it's home directory pointing directly at this DNN instance. In other words you can't use a virtual directory to get to the production site alias that way.

It does appear that you are trying to use SSL.

Just make sure you put http://localhost/ in the url and not https://localhost

If you do that and it still goes to the SSL, then look in the Aliases and see if one has that :443 on it.