Is it possible to take a parent portal and copy the files etc over to its own installation or take a standalone installation and take the portal/0 and pass it to a different standalone installation. Which would work better. I have a development server where I run a custom installation and several other start up installations / portals, but when we cut it to live we would perfer to put some portals in our main instaltion, but others into their own based on module needs / size of site. The problem is we don't really know where the final site will land till after we have started getting deep into the design / build out.

Thanks

I have separated single portals from an installation of multiple portals, but have never tried to insert.  I think that inserting one would be much more difficult.  

To separate, I first lock down the site to be separated to prevent updates during the transition.  I then take a full backup of the installed database and website files and restore on a test server (and make sure it is operational there).   Then with the host account,  I just delete all of the portals except the one I want to keep stand alone.   Some clean up is then done such as the removal of modules not used by that portal, and I have had to clear out old portal folders.  Once this was done, I would do another complete back up, and restore to a new database, and restore the website files to the new directory on the server.  

I have done it a few times this way, but  not sure if there is an easier way.