I am brand new to DotNetNuke.  I have been using Visual Studio 2008 C# and SQL 2008 to develop sites.   I installed DNN and built a decent site on my workstation.  I see DNN has GREAT potential. 

I have two questions that have probably been asked many times before, so I apologize in advance. I want to build my DNN site on a development machine and then when I am satisfied with it go ahead and publish it to my web server (I host my own server).  The server has its own external IP & SQL server.

Then the designated users can edit any page content they want to. 
I will make changes and then republish and let the user do their thing with regards to content.

TWO QUESTIONS:

1.       Is there a way to “Publish” a dotnetnuke site to a server from a workstation?  OR  Do I just copy the directory to the web server and be sure IIS sees it as a site and  restore a backup of the sql to a similar data file on that SQL server then change the SQl source IN THE WEB CONFIG?????
        a.       But it seems that would erase all content that had been added to existing pages???
        B.      It could also create orphan content if I took the content section off of an exiisting page????

2.       Can I open the development site with Visual Studio 2008 or 2010?  
        a.       What files should I NOT change with VS?
        b.      Can I build a project in VS and then PUBLISH that project to a web server??  Or is it unwise to change the DNN project with VS???
                          i.      What about the database reference?  (JUST CHANGE WEB CONFIG??)
                          ii.      Again I worry about erasing content on existing pages and the old nasty build up of orphan data.  :-((

THANKS
Joel