I need some assistance with moving a portal from my (local) development server to my (remote) production server. This problem has occupied me for about a week so it's now time to get some 'brains' on the problem.

I downloaded 4.8.2 install version ie just the run time files, and installed it on my Win 2000 Advanced server, using the MDF Attach method - the server has 2005 Express and .Net 2.0 installed. I installed it under http://dnn.dev.local and the install was faultless. I then spent about a week creating content in the portal, again without a hitch. I used the default DNN skin with some new images, and I changed the resource file to alter the Menu Treeview control caption from "Site Contents" to "Manual Contents" (my portal is a help manual).

I then (and this may be where things start to go wrong) attached the MDF from Management Studio and changed the portal alias from "dnn.dev.local" to "www.h**al.co.uk". I then changed the connection strings SQLExpress server name from my local server to my remote server, and uploaded the whole site into the root folder in new webspace under "www.h**al.co.uk"

I thought that would be sufficient but when I browse to the new remote web site the status bar says "Opening..." but it just stays that way for (ever) it seems. During this period Task Manager on the remote server tells me that the w3wp.exe process is running at 40% of my CPU cycles.

Obviously, I'm missing something, or doing something wrong - but what?

Regards
Rae MacLeman
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Thank you for your first point - that one's a lifesaver!

Your second point - the pinned post - was the one that got me into trouble in the first place eg "You can manualy (sic) add a new portal alias by entering  new record in the table PortalAlias". What better way to add the record manually than attach the database in Management Studio? Possibly, we could combine the two posts...