Hi Raj,

There are a number of different methods for moving your site from development to production. If you used Microsoft Webmatrix to develop your site and your host supports the publish feature you can publish directly from WebMatrix.

The more traditional method is to backup your website database and restore it to the database on your host server. Sometimes the host will do the restore for you.
 
Before you back up the database you should add the new portal alias for the production server. While on development server log in to your site and go to Host/portals make sure you are in edit mode and click the pencil next to portal Id then expand plus sign under Advanced Settings and then expand Portal Alias. Click the add alias button and add your domain name or the temporary URL the host has assigned. Next create a backup of your database using SQL Managment studio.

Create a database on your server and restore the backup there. Note the connection string, including server name, Userid and DB password. Transfer your website files to you server via FTP except for the web.config file. Copy your web.config file and save it as a backup somewhere on your computer.

Open the web.config file and modify the connection string to match your server info. FTP the web.config into the root of your website.

If everything went right you should now be able to browse to your website on the server with yourdomainname.com or temp URL. Sometimes if the host is running in medium trust you will need to add another entry to the web.config called Impersonation. Please check with you host if impersonation is required. Other changes may also be required depending on how the production environment differs from your development environment.

A third method is to use a third party module to back up and restore your website to the server. I prefer this method when moving a site from one host to another. I use and recommend the DNN backup module from Evotiva. http://Evotiva.com The module creates two zip files, one for site files and the other for the database that can easy be restore to the remote server. The restore wizard walks you through the process and updates the portal alias table and host settings for you. If you use this method read and follow the instruction for the restore pack.

 Hope this helps and good luck.

 Rich