Hello everyone.  I'm new to this portal software stuff so please bear with my ignorance.  I have been a professional developer for over 25 year so I should be able to understand most anything but I'm really missing something here.  I'm sure I don't understand the DNN archtecture very wellI just installed DNN Version 4.4.1 and am using the Visual Studio Integration that runs the little local ASP server.  I can access the default installed base server the just fine but now I want to create my own portal and start modifying it to meet my needs. 

I believe I've created a new portal using the DotNetNuke.template but I'm having a hard time understanding how to access it.  When I go to the "Portal Management" screen, off of the host/portals menu I can't even access the alias created for the default portal let alone my new portal.  I'm pretty sure I created the the new portal successfully because the database seems to reference it the "Portal Management" displays it.

My first problem is that I'm not sure where the virutal directories are defined for the little local server that gets run with you run under Visual Studio.  My second problem is that I'm not sure how the DNN framework distinguishes between the default protal content and my new portal's content.  It must be doing some sort of intelligent differencing or something because I looked at the file system and didn't see anything real apparent.   In my C:\temp\DotNetNuke Website1\Portals\_default directory I still only have the DotNetNuke.template and the DotNetNuke.template.resources files; I would have expected new files to be created based from these when I created the new portal. 

I did notice that when I logged into the default portal the framework created a 0 directory off of the C:\temp\DotNetNuke Website1\Portals directory and when I created the new portal it created a 1 directory off of the C:\temp\DotNetNuke Website1\Portals directory but both directories only seem to contain some .GIF and .JPG images and a cache directory. 

I was hoping that the DNN framework would create new portal template definition files which I could then modify to change module, page and pane information to meet my layout and data presentation needs.  I also thought that maye would ceated a new directory structure as a sibling to the _default directory in the portals directory but all I got was the 0 and 1 directories which didn't contain much of anything.  I know I'm missing something here.

Does anyone know what URL I'm suppossed to use to reference my new portal when running under the debug enviornment in Microsoft Visual Studio?  And how is the new portal's file and configuration information seperated from the default portal information.  I see that the database has entries for the new portal with the new name but the resource files, in the file system, seem to have not been propigated to a new virtural directory.  What am I missing? 

Thanks in advance for any help you can offer.

pmecham@deepclaritysolutions.com

Thanks, I apprciate your attempt to help but my question, probably not stated well, pertains to the entire process that occurs when you create a new portal based on an existing template.  For some reason I believed that this new portal creation action would create a new template file and make copies of all of the resources files tied to that portal in addition to populating the database tables with the new portal attribute information.  I also then expected the development system to modify the configuration parameters to the Cassina Web server to allow me to access my new virtual directory hosing my new portal.  If the system got me to this point I could then make the necessary modifications to my portal and build my sites. 

Since there is no visual way to deifne pane positions on a page and nobody but you has replied to my question in the last few days, I'm assuming that I have to do this type of stuff manually.  I just need to figure out how to configure the Cassini ASP server so it will host my new portal.  All of this isn't a problem I just wnated to make sure I wasn't doing more work then necessary, I'm a very lazy person.  If anyone knows anything else that could save me some time and effort I'd apprecitate any help you can offer.

Thank you for your reply and I look forward to anything, anyone else can add.

Great points.  I've done exactly what you've suggested.  With this being said I imagine that the answer to my question pertaining to whether or not the .net nuke framework has no ability to copy the ASP resource files, ASP page, GIFS and such and base template file over to another virtual directory is that it cannot do this. I believe I will have to do this and just configure the IIS server appropriately.  What the new portal creation functionality does is setup my database.  I appreciate your repsonse.