Hi all,

DNN newbie here...

I've recently/successfully created a brand new DNN site, and was pleasantly surprised at the ease with which I was able to create it. In my excitement and haste, I went on to purchase 2x more additional URL's, along with 2x separate hosting accounts.

After further reading of DNN however, it turns out that DNN supports multiple portals, hosted within the same hosting account. Now, I realise that I can save money on hosting, and so I would like to 'merge' these 3x separates sites with separate hosting accounts, into 1x hosted account with 3x portals. My hosting company charges on a pro-rata basis, which means that I can cancel mid-contract and not have to pay for future months charges.

The 3x sites I have are simple browsing/viewing sites that mostly use the core DNN modules. I will remain the only person with access to the Host account, and will only give content editing capabilities (and NOT admin privileges) to users of the 3x sites (i.e., apart from myself, no other user will be able to change structure/add pages/change skins etc on any of the 3x sites, however users will be able to edit content). This hopefully minimises the chances of one site crashing and affecting others.

The problems/questions I have are:

1 - On one of the sites, I already have 7 registered users, with the number growing by 1 or 2 users every other day. If at all possible, I would prefer NOT to have to ask these users to re-register after I move this stand-alone portal, to be one of 3x portals hosted in the same account - is this at all possible, and if so how?

2 - On another of the sites, I have about 8 pages, each with content that I would prefer NOT to have to re-create - is there anyway to export the content, and then re-import the content into the relevant portal after I have merged this stand-alone portal into the DNN set-up where I have only 1x hosting account but 3x seperate portals?

3 - Would it be possible to have separate and distinct URL's point to the 3x separate portals hosted within the same 1x hosted account? In other words, would it be possible to have www.domain1.com pointing to portal 1, www.domain2.com pointing to portal 2, and www.domain3.com pointing to portal 3? Also, presumably all three portals can each have their own AboutUs.aspx page (each using the same page name), since each would be in separate folders (since they are different portals)? also, is there any way to guarantee that there would be no 'content leakage', that is, users in portal 1 would NEVER somehow see pages from portal 3 and vice versa?

4 - How would things work from the database point-of-view? Would all three portals share the same database?

5 - All 3x sites have minimal traffic (a few tens of visitors each day) - what would be the best way to quickly move from having 3x separate hosted sites, to 1x hosted site with 3x portals, in order to achieve the least amount of downtime for all three sites? Presumably, I am better off purchasing a 4th hosting account (perhaps against an unused URL), set up the new account with the 3x portals, and then (somehow?) import the user accounts, portal content, templates and skins into the 3x portals in the 1x hosted account, change the nameservers to point to the new hosting account/provider, before cancelling the 3x previously created/no longer required separate accounts?

Finally, I am happy to subscribe to the DNNCreative.com magazine, to get access to articles/videos etc - can anyone point me in the direction of videos that would help me resolve the above questions/problems??

Lots of questions here, but hopefully, someone will be able to answer or point me in the right direction - thanks so much in advance!

Kind regards,
psasante

The best approach to most of your questions is to Export each existing portal, with content from the existing installations. Then, transfer the files to the single new installation and import the portals. The one thing that won't be transferred is the users. But ... there are third-party modules available that will do that for you. I have used a module from DNN Masters to move users from one installation to another.

3. Yes, DNS points all domains to the same installation. DotNetNuke uses its internal PortalAlias table to handle requests.

4. There is only one database. All data from all portals is in the single database.

Hi Pasasnte,
While Joseph is correct that the "best" approach would be to export each portal and re-import them, you should be aware that this will most likely not have the intended effect because of how the imports and exports occur. Even though you could save a few dollars on the hosting if you did that, you would be jeopardizing the stability of your site (multi-portals cause a lot of problems).

I would recommend leaving things as they are unless these are all three non-production "playground" websites or you'd like to rebuild them..

I won't argue with Tony's advice.  I hardly ever create multi-portal DotNetNuke sites ... though I am about to do exactly  that. 

An organization that I work with has three or four low volume sites.  We're probably going to combine all of them in a single portal, and we'll be following the steps that I outlined.  These sites don't have users, either ...

There are a two other installations that use multiple portals for good reason.  They are all associated with a single organization, and it makes good sense to keep them together.  Again, no real users and not much of a potential for the sites harming one another.


-------
Remember ... BACKUPS are your friend.