Hi All,

I'm a DNN newbie, so I appreciate your help.  I am building a site for a client who wishes to have a test site, and a live site.  This way we can try out changes, upgrades etc to see how it will affect DNN before we make changes to our main site.

I am hosting on Go Daddy, and have two different SQL Servers running, and two different directories containing fresh installs of DNN. 

Is there a way that I can copy and paste certain folders from the test directory into the live directory so that the content will transfer over without having to start from scratch? I would just try to copy and paste the entire test directory, but I thought there would be some differences in the config file(s) since they are running on two different SQL Servers.

Thanks!

Thanks Carlos.

So in the case of copying the entire SQL Server, would I also need to copy some files in the FTP?

Thanks,

-Craig

Craig:

You need to visualize how DNN is storing the site you are building.  All content and settings go to the database, the DNN physical directory not only includes the framework executable code, but also the skin definitions, graphics, and the code for the modules you may have added (core modules or third party).  So, if you install a module in testing and start building with it, before you transfer the SQL database to prod, you also need to make sure that the DNN directories are identical.  Be careful however with the Web.config file, at least the database connection strings will be different.  Another thing that will probably be different and drive you crazy if you forget about it is the Portal Alias.  To avoid problems with this I just add the production alias to the test database, even if you don't use it.

Now, bear in mind that moving the test SQL database to prod obviously overwrites the whole prod database.  This technique will probably help you for initial deployment but you should be carefull if you need to do it after prod is actually in production.  From that point on, hopefully your environment is more stable and you would not have the need for major changes (I did say hopefully).  It is at this point that I use pages with controlled access for testing on the production site.

Carlos