Richard Edwards posted on September 15, 2004 08:12
Grab a copy of your SQL or Access database and your full site directory from your live server and set up a test enviroment on your local machine. Since I have several portals running off of the single install, I made some shortcut dns entries in my hosts file located in /windows/system32/drivers/etc that point to localhost. For instance, I created an entry named dnnstuff and one for trilliumwood that both point to 127.0.0.1.
Next I made sure that my default web site located under IIS Admin pointed to the root folder that I brought down from the live server. It was important to do this temporarily for testing because if you don't, all of your image links will not display properly when you get your test site up.
Next, create a new empty sql database and restore your backup over this. Change the connection string settings in web.config to reflect the new database location.
In your portals table, go in and change the PortalAlias settings to reflect the DNS aliases you set up in your hosts file. If you want to, instead of replacing these settings, just append the new alias to the old one with a comma. For instance, for dnnstuff, I had www.dnnstuff.com and I replaced that with dnnstuff which matches my alias in the hosts file.
Ok, now you should be able to test your test setup by browsing to your local alias, in my example http://dnnstuff and everything should work just like your live site.
Once you get this far, you are ready to start integrating the new version.