I have found my own solution.  It probably is common sense or something only a "newbie" wouldn't know, but since I didn't know I will post it for anyone who happens upon the same situation.  As we often do during development, I was moving too fast and missed a couple details.

(By the way, I am using version 4.)

I had put together and configured two different portals on my development machine.  One was for our intERnet site and the other was for our intRAnet site.  Obviously one could and was set-up to use Active Directory to take advantage of the ease and integration of user authentication.

I made one clear mistake on the configuration of one that I did not account for on the other portal.  In the intERnet portal, I anticipated the directory path that the portal would be deployed to and added it to my portal aliases while the portal was still on the development machine.  The intRAnet portal was not so lucky.  I had forgotten to set the portal alias that this portal would be deployed to prior to deploying it, resulting in the behior described in my earlier post.

The solution turned out to be simple as long as you have access to your SQL Server data.  First, make sure that you are changing the correct database and database server.  In my case, I have two.  The first is for development, and the other is for active applications.  On the deployment one, open the appropriate database and find the Portal_Aliases table.  Here, you would either add your new alias or edit a current one to reflect the correct portal alias.  Should you have more than one portal, you would need to first determine what the correct portal ID is.

Once you have corrected the Portal Alias, recycle the Application Pool and navigate to the site again.  The method of recycling the Application Pool will vary on the version of Windows you are using. 

Basically, for any version you can restart IIS, but there is a better option in Windows Server 2003.  I group my applications into logical Application Pools in IIS 6.  This way you can simply right-click on the appropriate Application Pool and recycle that single one without affecting all the other applications that you might have on that server.

---

Will Strohl

Upendo Ventures DNN experts since 2003 Official provider of the Hotcakes Commerce Cloud and SLA support

That should be all that is needed to be done PRIOR to deploying your portal.  However, if you already deployed it, this won't matter anymore because it is already deployed, likely with a different datasource.  If this is the case, then you need to make this change in the database.

---

Will Strohl

Upendo Ventures DNN experts since 2003 Official provider of the Hotcakes Commerce Cloud and SLA support