Does anyone know where there is information or discussion about how to update a DNN site that is live ? 

Im new to DNN.  Ive been looking at and planning my DNN project for a while, but Ive sort of run into a wall before I even begin.

After reading books and bbs postings for weeks, I see wonderful discussion about everything except one: real world deployment.

Im used to the idea of developing in one environment and then uploading versions to production when they are ready.  I planned to put up a simple beginning to my site, and then keep adding and changing over time. I expect to spend a lot of time, doing a lot of changes.

Ive already been treated like a wierdo by a couple of hosts for trying to setup a traditional "development" environment on my PC and just upload the files and db.  It never worked (I always got an under construction screen), and they all let me know it isnt something they support or even recommend.

I wont name those hosts, because frankly that would be unfair. I think its my ignorance not theirs that is the problem.  Clearly, in the DNN world, keeping a traditional "development environment" is for people with very serious levels of DNN, and database administration knowledge beyond what would be needed for such a setup in straight HTML, or even ASP.Net (which I already use a lot).

For the life of me, I cant figure out how anyone produces a production site in DNN.  It seems like you iether work live in your production environment, or you are privy to some secret formula that nobody discusses.

Any advice to me that combines how to upgrade in the real world, and what type of host to look for in order to do that... would be really helpful to me.

I eagerly await your post.  Hopefully you might to remember to post a reply here, so Ill get an email and will know where to look.

That comment about  SQL data providers kinda scares me, because Ive never heard the term before... shows where I am in this.

Frankly, I think from what Ive seen that DNN is a really beautiful product, this is my only real concern about it.

You know, I started with the same premise as you. I'm used to working in a corporate environment where you develop, move to a qa environment, and only THEN push to production. I was also struggling with even installing on my local machine (at first anyway, I got it eventually).

I made the same conclusion you did - it must be some mystery that I just don't get yet. So I went with the flow and had powerdnn do their magic. So far, so good. I can't say that I'm "live" yet, which is weird since I've actually got something out there. The only module I've installed so far that I"m unhappy with is the Event module. I keep getting weird errors so I finally just deleted it. I'm thinking for now, I'll just have a text list of Events.