I have a 'live' site and a 'test' site in a hosted environment.  These are both on 04.08.01 and I would like to update these to 04.08.04, but first I would like to make a local copy of live site, where I hope to test the update (followed by updates of the some modules).  If this goes well, I will update my test site and then, finally my live site.  I made the test site (which I copied from my live site) in order to have a place to test these things, but I have 2 reasons for wanting a local copy: we are about to embark on some major changes to one of our primary modules and I'd like a "play" area, if you will, so that I can test things before my partners see it in the test site, as well being able to work off-line sometimes. and I'd like one more place to try the dnn update before attempting in our live site, (since I'm so new and very inexperienced, I'd really like more than one test-run at the update to verify I won't have any issues with our live site).

Ok, having given more background than was probably necessary, if anyone's still reading, here's my a description of my current situation:

My local machine is Vista with SQL Server Express. 

I set up a new installation of DNN 04.08.00 locally (took quite some time to figure out how to make it connect to a specific, non-attached, database in sql server express).  That installation appeared to work correctly (could log in as host, etc). Then, I did the following:

I copied over this directory with my backed up files from my test site.
I restored a backup of my test site db to my new db on sql server express.
I changed the Portal Alias.
I changed the web.config file connection information (copied from a backup of the web.config of my new 04.08.00 local installation)

When I try to access this new local site now, I get the following error:

DotNetNuke Error: - Version 04.08.01

Invalid URI: The hostname could not be parsed.

(at which point, I realized that my live & test were 04.08.01... When I had originally asked for a DNN installation on my test site, my hosting company installed 04.08.00 to my test site - most current at that time... after we worked the kinks out of our site, we were ready to go to live. I asked for my hosting company to install the latest DNN to our live stie - same request as before, but in the month and a half we took putting things together, 04.08.01 had come out, so that's we go there.  Some time later, I copied live to test, with no issues... never thought to check the dnn versions at that point, so I thought I was still on 04.08.00)

 Now, I'm not sure where to go with this.

If anyone has any ideas (including completely starting over on my local machine...), I would be so appreciative. 

OK, thanks...I'll give that a shot.

I had restored my site to a subdirectory under wwwroot, but I'll move it up to wwwroot and see if I can get the alias and hosts entries lined up.

Wow, that works great! It's such a simple solution too.

So, now in addition to my regular portal aliases (domain1.com, www.domain1.com, domain2.com,etc.), I've added: domain1.local, domain2.local

Added some references in my HOSTS file:

127.0.0.1        domain1.local

127.0.0.1        domain2.local

and fired up the browser... go to the .local address to get the "local" version of the .com

The .local bit helps me make sure that I'm not really trouncing all over the actual site. I suppose you could even change the header on the test site (or the skin color -- something that stands out from the real site)...just to keep you from getting yourself in trouble. " border=0>

Thanks, Mitchel

I decided to take your lead and write up a simple tutorial on this here:

Setting up a local test copy of your hosted DNN site

Hopefully, it is easy enough to understand.

The good news: I actually checked something off of a ToDo list!

The bad news: It wasn't my ToDo list!

Oh well, at least I didn't add 10 more things to my list today (yet)...

Feel free to link to that article from your site (it has some link backs to your articles in it).