DNN is too cool and too powerful to be so hamstrung in the area of migration. It is almost IMPOSSIBLE to move a DNN site from one server to another, and Google searches on the topic reveal nothing but frustrated users (like myself) and "experts" scratching their heads and acknowledging that, really, it can't be done.
Any enterprise-class application needs to be able to support basic development/test/production staging as well as failover (being able to quickly bring the site up in another environment). DNN suffers terrible in these areas. It's just too brittle.
Example: I created a DNN site with a couple of portals and a lot of content in a folder in my hosted site (on easyCGI) since this was the default EasyCGI implementation. It turns out that it is impossible to move the site to the root. That's such a simple task, yet impossible to perform. The only solution is to manually rebuild the site in the root. Amazing!! With any other site this would essentially be a copy/paste task.
It's time to solve the problem once and for all. DNN needs the ability to perform the following tasks:
From the Host menu: move / copy the entire site to a different location (ie. different domain or folder within the domain) by specifying a new location and clicking a button to move / copy.
From the Admin menu: move / copy a portal to a different host location by specifying the new host root; or, import a site from another host by specifying the host and portal ID.
Am I wrong? Am I being unfair?