Hello,

I have set up DotNetNuke on my server at home so that I can experiment with it.  I have set up some portals and I am having trouble accessing one of them.  I'm sure that I have made a dumb mistake out of ignorance and hopefully somebody will be able to help me to fix it.

I have W2K3 server with IIS 6.  This is all running internally on my home domain and is not exposed to the internet.  I set up DNN as a virtual directory under the default website:  Default Web Site-->DotNetNuke.  The Default Website that was set up had a portal alias of localhost/dotnetnuke (as I would expect) and I also added a portal alias containing the name of my server so that I could browse to the site from other computers on the network:  california/dotnetnuke.  I can browse to this site without any problems.  After reading about how to create Parent Portals, I tried creating another portal at localhost/site1 and gave it an alias of california/site1.  I did this because I wanted to try making a separate parent portal that was not under the localhost/dotnetnuke "domain name."  When I try navigating to either localhost/site1 or california/site1, I get a 404 page cannot be found error.  I verified in IIS that the folders for the site were there and the portal is appearing on my portals page, so I don't understand why I'm gettin this error.  As another test, I then created a different parent portal and gave it aliases of localhost/dotnetnuke/site1 and california/dotnetnuke/site1.  I have no problems browsing to this URL. 

Can anyone help to explain to me why I cannot get to localhost/site1 but I can get to localhost/dotnetnuke/site1?  I thought that as long as the aliases were properly set up, it was possible to have two parent portals, i.e. localhost/dotnetnuke and localhost/site1.  Instead, the only way I am able to get to any portal is if it is under localhost/dotnetnuke.  Am I understanding something incorrectly?  Thank you in advance for any help that you can give.

Regards,
John

Jeff,

Thank you so much for respoding, I really appreciated your clarification.  What you said makes sense.  Let me see if I understand you correctly:

--I could use this internally in my home domain without it being internet facing, but that requires setting up my DNS correctly.  After reading your response, I tried setting up another zone in DNS called site1.com.  I created a host record and a CNAME record and pointed those to the server that I am running DNN on.  When I browsed to site1.com, I got the "Under Construction" page for the default website.  I still need to figure out how to get the site1.com zone pointing to my DNN installation at defaultwebsite/dotnetnuke.  But once I do, this should work, right?

--It sounds like it is best/easiest to install DNN either in the Default Website or in its own website.  Is it possible to install it in a virtual directory under the Default Website (as I have done) and have everything work correctly?  For instance, if I were to make my server internet facing and register a domain name (for example, www.testsite.com) , to get to my DNN site I would always have to type www.testsite.com/dotnetnuke.  Is that correct?  If so, I think that I've set up my installation of DNN incorrectly. 

Thank you in advance your help.

--John