I am having a devil of a time deploying a site developed on a pre-production computer from a development box. It seems that every attempt to move resulted in the same outcome; the installation page is displayed upon loading the page in IIS and a browser. I can't get around it.

This is what I have tried.

Copied directory machine to machine. Run Frontpage extensions (Sharepoint), Modify privs. giving Network process full control as documented. Ensured SQL Server is running (express, 2000 and 2005 were tried).

Using VWD, copied the site from development system to production system to the same directory as the development box and to a subweb; same outcome.

Frontpage Import site and copy to server.

Nada!

Can you offer a new comer to this really nifty framework a few pointers or direct me to a reference which talks about deployment, it would be very appreciable. To build from scratch, the site takes approx. 8 hours of configuration and since the site looks really good on the development box, well... let's say I would rather deploy as is.

To the point of my question, how can I deploy a dotnetnuke site from a development PC to a production environment all of which are running the same IIS versions, OS etc.

Thanks!

Tim Peer

I don't think surface configuration is the issue as I can access the database  using office tools and via odbc without problem. I found a posting related to an http alias; I created an alias and same outcome. The server on which I wish to deploy the site is named, WebVM with the site is located in a virtual directory ezorder. I created an alias http://webvm/ezorder and the site still displays the installation page.

I should also mention the portal that is configured is the default portal. Is it necessary to create a new portal to deploy the site?

Thanks!

Tim

if you can connect to the db that by no means means that tcp ip is enabled, because office tools do not connect with tcpip. Please check again whether your sql server protocols are properly set up and whether or not a firewall is blocking the sql communication port (by default that is port 1433). There is a small "hidden feature" in dnn 4.5.3 that starts up the wizard when no connection to the db is available.

It is not necessary to create a second portal, it is however necessary to have the url of the new site added to the list of portal aliases of the current portal. That however is not the issue if you get the install wizard. Really, the only reason (afaik) for that to appear is if there is no db connection possible

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