It isn't viable to build a portal on one installation and transfer it to another.

DNN is a live content publishing system. You should be doing all your work on the live portal system. Use the permissions framework to keep things only visible to yourself and any other approvers or workers whilst it's not ready. Create solid backup and restore procedures and then build as many portals as you like.

The only thing you really should do on a separate development system is build and/or test modules. Once a module passed all approval criteria, go ahead an install it on the live site.

Parent portals require their own domain or subdomain names.

Sub or child portals are created to that they appear to reside in a subfolder of one of the parent domains.

• Parent on domain: http://Domain.com
• Parent on subdomain: http://Subdomain.Domain.com
• Child on domain: http://Domain.com/Child
• Child on subdomain: http://Subdomain.Domain.com/Child

When you have created a child portal, look in the DNN root folder and you'll see a new folder with the name of the new portal. This folder contains a file for routing traffic to the right place. This folder and the entry you will find in Site Settings, Aliases, are the only differences between a parent and a child portal.

Rob