I have a very general question about portal aliases:  do their URL's always have to be proceded by /dotnetnuke (e.g. http://mywebsite.com/dotnetnuke).  I'm very confused as to how some of the show case sites do not have that entry (e.g. http://youthroots.faithstreams.com/) but were developed using the dotnetnuke framework.   Say for instance, a user has a website www.mywebsite.com, how can that user make it so that his website mirrors the contents of the dotnetnuke instance(www.mywebsite.com/dotnetnuke)?

Thank you very much Nina.  Your video was very helpful.  I had a couple of questions.  My hosting provider uses a virtual directory setup.  Is it still possible to create parent portals using fully qualified domain names?  Assuming the domain pointers are properly configured in IIS and DNS, my question is where exactly to point these domains in the filesystem.  Should they point to the /dotnetnuke folder (virtual directory is pointing to it) or corresponding dotnetnuke/portal/portalID folder?  Moreover, I was hoping to get some other clarification as to adding aliases to a portal.  You mentioned when the site is ready for deployment one can add an alias to the portal.   Where should those domains (aliases)  be pointing to in the filesystem?

When discussing parent portals that use new domain names you mentioned that you had to have the domain properly configured in IIS and DNS...what exactly does that entail?  Any help would be greatly appreciated.  Thank you.

I only have read your last question: yes, that is enough. But do not forget to add other domains as a portal alias in portal settings.

J.