When I run my solution locally (F5 in Visual Studio), my url looks normal at first:

http://localhost:portNumber/MyWebSite/

but before the browser loads, the url is pointing to a production server (the url changes). Any ideas what causes this?

 

I restored the production databases to my local machine.

Where do I find instructions for how to add a portal alias? I'm new to DNN and haven't figured out how to start learning. I bought Professional DotNetNuke 4 but I don't see how to add a portal alias.

I am having the exact same issue as the original poster, eg I restored a backup of my live DB on my dev machine. I then changed portal alias ID 1 (Portal 0, no other portals) to be "localhost\virtdir" and have removed all other portal aliases. I changed the web.config so that the sitesqlserver point to this restored, local DB.
When I bring up the site it still re-directs to the live site and the IIS log shows a 302 (redirect).

My first try was just adding an extra alias but it did not work either. IIS is oberating OK, as I can enter an URL say http://localhost/virtdir/403-3.gif and the standard  pic displays.

I then stopped my production server and DNN redirected to the default instance on that server. Weird!!

Anyone got any hits?

Thanks in advance