what should the portal alias be for a local install of DNN? I have downloaded the project from our live server and also the database, the only problem is that when i run the project it redirects me to the live site b/c of the portal alias

I don't know about the Portal Alias, but one solution is to remove all the absolute URL references in your HTML, and convert to relative references.

Ex: Instead of

h t t p : ⁄ ⁄ www·mydomain·com/Portals/0/Home.aspx"

 your links become

 h r e f="/Portals/0/Home.aspx" 

There is a program called "Engage:F3" that can search through your whole site and find a specific character string.

Of course you only want to change links to your own site, not external sites.

If there is a solution involving the alias, that would be less work.

The answer depends in how you create the IIS website. Typically, you will use http://localhost/site name. But, you need to replace site name with the name you used in IIS.