Hi guys,

I have an existing installation of DNN "5.6.1" with 4 portal hosted by hosting.com. That is totally screw-up, I am not able to change any of the settings,add users, create new portal or update the site.

My plan is to move the site locally and I am wondering if it is possible to use the same database to do a fresh local install. Then create all portal matching it's portal ID and create all user account manually. Will my crazy idea work? Is there any other alternative?

I wanted to move the entire site locally, but I was not able to add the localhost alias to any of the sites.

Get a backup of the database and install it on a local SQL Server.

Get a backup of the web directory and create a local website.

Edit the web.config file so that it will use the local SQL Server database. To do that you will need to edit the two connection strings.

Since the database will not have the correct entries in the portalalias table, use SQL Server Management Studio to alter the portalalias table.

Then, you should have a working local copy of your installation.

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If this doesn't work, there are other alternatives. Let me know if you need those.

Ok, I will try it. I forward my domain to my local IP so once that done I will be able to access it.

Hi Joseph,

I am not very sql savvy. How can I edit the portal alias with SQL Server Management Studio? Where should I look for it?

The Express version of SQL Server Management Studio is a free download from the Microsoft website. We have some tutorials that will introduce you to some basic SQL and use of SSMS. Check on the tutorials page.

Now ... as for the portalalias table, you will want to add an entry for your localhost environment. Perhaps the easiest way to do that would be to create a new install locally, and look at what is placed in that installation's portalalias table. You can then duplicate that in your downloaded installation.

For example, if you computer is localhost and your website is dnntest, the httpalias should be localhost/dnntest and the portalid should be the number associated with the portal. The probably will be 0 if there is only one portal. The other fields are not important and can be blank or null. The first field is auto-assigned, so you don't have to do that one.

Joseph,

I have SQL SMS installed. I also have several version of dnn instance as a separate test install on the server. But since am moving the site locally I will be able to fix the current installation error I have. Such as not able to add users or modify any of the settings. I was able to use a restore of the database and load the site locally, I point the DNS to my local IP and is working so far. So now is just time to fix all the other bugs Thank you.