Hi, I recently upgraded my DNN installation to v 4.5.5 and then installed a new skin on the main site.  Some days later I noticed that all my daughter portals have been expired although I have never set expiry dates.  I can still see them in Host, Portals but there seems to be no way to restore them within DNN.  They have not been removed from the server.  Any idea how this happened and how I can restore the portals?  Thanks. Steve.

Hello,

I'm not sure how this has happened, but this should help you fix the problem.

• Login as host
• go to the host menu/portals
• click on the edit pencil icon for a portal which has expired
• (this takes you to the admin menu/site settings for that portal)
• click on advanced settings
• click on host settings
• here you will see expiry date
• remove the date
• scroll down and click on update

Hope this helps, thanks,

Thanks Lee. I have checked the option you suggested.  However the field is blank on all three of the daughter portals and even if I set the date to some time in the future (like 01/01/2100), the portals remain expired.  Any further suggestions?

mmm strange.

ok,  the next thing I would look at is the actual database.  If you look at the portals table in your DotNetNuke database, have a look at the expirydate column, and see if all of these values are set to Null.

If you are using SQL Server express, video one in this tutorial explains how to attach a local DotNetNuke database to SQL Server express so that you can access the database and video 2  explains how to edit your web.config file after attaching the database:

How to transfer a localhost DotNetNuke installation to a live website

If it is your first time experimenting with this then it would be an idea to create a test DotNetNuke installation first and double check you can attach the database without causing errors.

The portals table had a Null Expirydate for the main site and 01/01/2100 for all the others. I changed them all back to Null but it has made no difference.  They are still expired.

ok, so if this happened after an upgrade my next step would be to re-upload all of the DNN 4.5.5 files to your DNN installation just incase one of them was missed or became corrupted.

I don't know of any other reason why the portals would be expired. - Have you had a look in the eventlogs to see if any errors are showing?

Hi Lee.  I have found the problem. My colleague cleaned the database and wiped my portal entries without telling me or making backups first ...

If there still is data in the database, then a reinstall of DotNetNuke may allow you to recover some of your data. If "cleaned the database" means that he deleted data from there, and if you don't have a backup, you may be out of luck.

It's possible that SQL server has data in the logs (or somewhere else) that would allow for you to recover data. But, it's not likely to be easy.

eek, yes good luck and hope you manage to sort it out,

Thanks,