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Creating a DNN Parent Portal 

Posted on Fri May 25, 2007 by Tom Kraak
In: DotNetNuke, DNN Tips & Tricks | 57 Comments

This post was inspired by a question in the dotnetnuke.com forums and continues our “DNN for Beginners” series.

I am new to DNN and I am looking for instructions on installing one portal per domain name. These portals are independent of each other. I want them to use the same SQL Server database and use the same DNN code base (the same Dlls).

The ability to run multiple websites from one DNN installation has been touted by many as the number one feature over the years (especially in DNN’s infancy), even though I beg to differ. That’s food for another post though.

DNN allows you set up a second website or portal on your install as a “parent” or “child” portal. The only real difference is that parent portals have a unique domain name, whereas child portals run off of parent portals such as mysite.com/childportal.

To get back to the above question, here is how to create a parent portal. Login as SuperUser and navigate to Host | Portals. Here you’ll see a list of all portals running on this DNN install. From the action menu choose Add New Portal.

DNN Portals

“Parent” is checked by default as the Portal Type, so no need to change that. Next, enter the domain name the new site will live on into the Portal Alias field such as my-new-site.com. A word of caution. When it comes to parent portals, the “my-new-site.com” domain name must already point correctly to your DNN install, otherwise the parent portal creation will fail. Most hosting providers support multiple domains pointing to a single IIS website at no additional cost.

Add New Portal

The Title, Description and Keywords fields are optional at this point. You can always enter these once the new portal is up and running. You do have to choose an install template though. For this discussion let’s go with the default DotNetNuke template. I’m currently working on a post that will shed some more light on DNN install templates and how to create your own.

Up next are the Security Settings. Pay attention in this section, because the user you specify here will be the initial administrator for the new portal. Once that’s done, click “Create Portal” and if everything goes well, a “fresh” DNN portal will appear. First thing you should do is log in with the admin account you just created. After logging in successfully, you can safely assume that your new parent portal is alive and well.

Do you have anything to add? Feel free to do so in the comments. And if you like this post, consider subscribing to my full feed RSS or get blog updates by email.




Comments

Vasilis Monday, May 28, 2007 at 12:33 PM Vasilis says:

A closer look into the installation templates will surely be very useful too! And not just for newbies :) Keep it up buddy!

Jeff Kershner Sunday, July 08, 2007 at 4:00 PM Jeff Kershner says:

What does this mean:
When it comes to parent portals, the “my-new-site.com” domain name must already point correctly to your DNN install, otherwise the parent portal creation will fail. Most hosting providers support multiple domains pointing to a single IIS website at no additional cost.

Tom Kraak Sunday, July 08, 2007 at 4:55 PM Tom Kraak says:

Jeff - that means that the “my-new-site.com” domain name must point to your hosting providers name servers and a DNS entry must be in place to point the domain name to your website ... all with the goal of reaching your DNN install via my-new-site.com.

Let me know if you have further questions.

Jeff Sunday, July 08, 2007 at 6:13 PM Jeff says:

So my doing a nslookup for my domain name: doorywebsolutions.com, I see that it resolves to my hosting account. Looks like step 1 works...

You mentions that a DNS entry must be in place to point the domain name to my website. Well, when I create a parent portal in DNN, is my website the the install directory to my dotnetnuke (www.azlocals.com/dotnetnuke) or do I need to point it to a sub directory in that installation?

Thanks for your fast reply!

Tom Kraak Sunday, July 08, 2007 at 8:29 PM Tom Kraak says:

Point all your domains to the root of your DNN install. DNN will sort it out from there.

Jeff Sunday, July 08, 2007 at 9:51 PM Jeff says:

I have my www.doorywebsolutions.com mapped to my DNN installation directory (www.azlocals.com/dotnetnuke).

I created a parent portal for doorywebsolutions.

But when I visit www.doorywebsolutions.com, my browser just goes to www.azlocals.com/dotnetnuke.

What might I be doing wrong?

Dan Cernese Tuesday, October 23, 2007 at 4:07 PM Dan Cernese says:

same here!

Tom Kraak Tuesday, October 23, 2007 at 4:19 PM Tom Kraak says:

And you guys are sure that you added the domain name of your new parent portal as a DNN portal alias?

pucca Friday, November 09, 2007 at 9:22 AM pucca says:

how to point the alias(e.g. my-own-web.com) to your root(127.0.0.1) in XP? what file I need to update.
How to create a new portal template? Thank you so much.

Pucca

Tom Kraak Saturday, November 10, 2007 at 10:55 PM Tom Kraak says:

Edit your Windows host file to tie my-own-web.com to 127.0.0.1. See mvps.org/winhelp2002/hostsfaq.htm for more info.

The default portal template (DotNetNuke.template) is located in \Portals\_default. So just open that file in a text editor, make your desired changes and "save as" your own template.

Let me know if I should blog more about that process.

pucca Wednesday, November 14, 2007 at 7:34 AM pucca says:

Tom,
thank you for the information. I have new in the setup the portal in DNN. here is what I tried for the portal alias:
1. go the hosts file enter one entry
127.0.0.1 my-own-site.com
2. go to IIS control to set up
2.1 a virtual directory to my-own-site.com and mape to the real directory
2.2 right click the directory, go to the property ->directory security tab ->authentification control -> browse -> andd IUser and ASPNET user
3. bring up the DNN ->host ->protal -> alias=my-own-site.com custom the directory to the directory I set in the IIS.
But it idoes not work. Can u tell me what is the problem?

Can you paste more detail information one the portal template part. I would like to set up couple options templates(beside dotnetnuke) when I create a new portal. Thank you So much.

pucca

Tom Kraak Friday, December 28, 2007 at 7:31 PM Tom Kraak says:

Pucca - did you ever resolve the above?

Club1Ten Monday, February 11, 2008 at 2:03 PM Club1Ten says:

I am trying to add a portal. I go through all of the steps as outlined above, but when I go to the new address, it defaults back to the primary portal. I can't find anywhere to access the new portal.

Tom Kraak Monday, February 11, 2008 at 2:16 PM Tom Kraak says:

Club1Ten - has the DNS been set up correctly, meaning “my-new-site.com” points to your DNN install?

Travis D. Falls Saturday, July 12, 2008 at 11:21 PM Travis D. Falls says:

When you say set up your DNS, should I point the DNS at my folder for my parent portal, or for the DNN install? Meaning should I point my dns at the portal/01 dir?

Tom Kraak Sunday, July 13, 2008 at 2:06 PM Tom Kraak says:

Travis - point the DNS to your DNN install ... DNN will sort it out from there.

Vengaboys Thursday, July 31, 2008 at 1:57 PM Vengaboys says:

This blog post http://dnchannel.blogspot.com/2008/07/programmatically-creating-dotnetnuke.html shows how to create a portal programmatically using the DotNetNuke API.

Barry Thursday, July 31, 2008 at 7:22 PM Barry says:

This does not work as advertised, and I cannot find a detailed, accurate, effective piece of documentation on this feature anywhere. It is quite frustrating.

Tom Kraak Thursday, July 31, 2008 at 7:24 PM Tom Kraak says:

Barry - what exactly did you run into?

Barry Thursday, July 31, 2008 at 7:28 PM Barry says:

I take that back! I actually just got it to work!

Barry Thursday, July 31, 2008 at 8:30 PM Barry says:

Well, when I first set it up, i followed the advise in the top of this thread and it did not work. I just got a .NET application error, but then I realized that I had not set my new site to use .NET 2.0 in IIS. I tweaked this setting in IIS (I'm running Win Srvr 2003 Std ) and it worked.

Now, I have several sites running on the same dotnetnuke install.

URL1: www.enecms.com
URL2: beta.pauline.org

Both running on the exact same DNN install. Latest version, by the way, with SQL 2005 SP2

Tom Kraak Thursday, July 31, 2008 at 8:32 PM Tom Kraak says:

Well done Barry and thanks for sharing.

Amrit Ray Wednesday, August 13, 2008 at 6:41 PM Amrit Ray says:

When you say update the DNS and point it to your DNN install, do you mean, 1. Change the name servers on the domain to your hosts name servers, and 2. create an alias for your new domain to your DNN install website?

The new domain surely needs physical hosting on the same server as your DNN install if you wish to create emails on your new domain.

Tom Kraak Wednesday, August 13, 2008 at 8:24 PM Tom Kraak says:

Amrit - that's exactly what I meant. Thanks for elaborating on it.

mark Friday, October 03, 2008 at 11:24 AM mark says:

RE: "...the “my-new-site.com” domain name must already point correctly to your DNN install..."

I wish to create a new portal from my DNN installation v. 04.05.05.

I want to start developing a parent site before it goes live - so I don't want to point it to the DNN install location just yet.

How can I get around this?

website:
www.sypensions.org.uk (this is the site to be revamped and pointed to DNN - but I don't want to point it to DNN webhost area until I have completed the site.)

When you say:
"it must already point correctly to your DNN install..."
do you mean point to it in IIS - creating a virtual directory?

thanks,
mark


mark Monday, October 06, 2008 at 12:03 PM mark says:

further to the above comment,

I have since reason to believe that I need to setup a host header in IIS to create another site...

but I'm still having problems.

My DNN installation is on a virtual directory called www.sypensions.org.uk/dnn (the first site is working ok), but I can't create another site.

When creating the host header - I can not right click on the name of the virtual directory (which is called dnn) - this is where my dotnetnuke installation points to.

I can only cretae a host header (in IIS 6) from right clicking on the level above (on sypensions.org.uk website).
New host Header called - 'development.sypensions.org.uk'

I then created a new portal and alias also: 'development.sypensions.org.uk'

When I visit www.development.sypensions.org.uk - I get an error:
"430 Not found, Unable to resolve name"

I also tried development.sypensions.org.uk/dnn as an alias, but this does not work either.

Any ideas?

regards,
mark.

Tom Kraak Monday, October 06, 2008 at 8:12 PM Tom Kraak says:

Add development.sypensions.org.uk to the same place where the sypensions.org.uk host header is specified.

mark Tuesday, October 07, 2008 at 12:10 PM mark says:

Thanks, I gave up on the host header method - as I couldn't get a new site created this way.

I am thinking that the problem could be due to our firewall perhaps? This mabe why I could only get DNN working in a subfolder of our internet in IIS.

The only way I could get a new site created was to create a new virtual directory in the same IIS subfolder as our original dotnetnuke site with the same path (not sure if this makes sense.)

I then created a new parent portal in DNN with the following address: www.sypensions.org.uk/development/ (our first DNN site was: www.sypensions.org.uk/dnn if you were thinking it looks like a child site).

Is there any reason why not to use virtual directories like this to create a new site?

mark.

apple17 Thursday, October 16, 2008 at 3:48 PM apple17 says:

I have a site where my base install of DNN is at http://www.mysite.com/mydnnsite .

Now I want another portal at http://www.mysite.com/myNEWdnnsite using the same dnn install and database.

Seems to my that this is another PARENT site, but I don't know how to make this happen. Can you advise?

Thanks!

Jonathan Saturday, November 15, 2008 at 8:23 AM Jonathan says:

We also have the same problem of parent aliases all returning the user to the main portal.

Could this have anything to do with our DNN instance being the main IIS website rather than a virtual directory?

Tom Kraak Monday, November 24, 2008 at 9:56 AM Tom Kraak says:

@ apple17 - did you try to follow the steps in the post above?

@ Jonathan - the process of creating DNN child / parent portals never requires any IIS involvement such as virtual directory creation.

jed Tuesday, December 16, 2008 at 9:49 PM jed says:

Hi tom,
I read your article and I have a question here, how to point the domain name to the DNN install?

Thanks,
Jed

Tom Kraak Monday, December 22, 2008 at 9:46 PM Tom Kraak says:

Jed - you point the domain name to the DNN install by mapping host header values to the website's IP address in IIS. That obviously assumes though that your DNS is set up properly (domain name pointing to your web server.)

I hope to have a screencast version of this blog post as soon as next week.

Tuff Tuesday, January 06, 2009 at 7:10 PM Tuff says:

Creating aliases with same domain works fine. Adding another domain name for a child portal only points to main portal. If I direct my new domain to the virtual directory of the child portal, the portal then gives an unrecoverable "Runtime Error" even if I remove the new domain. Help!!!

jmajor Thursday, April 23, 2009 at 2:39 PM jmajor says:

Hi,

I'm still in the dark....sorry.

So, I have an original install of dnn at: www.web-site-ecommerce-consulting.com and logged in and made a parent portal and alias of www.wvosvo.com and wvosvo.com and went into my domain manager and pointed my Arecord to the IP address. When I type in www.wvosvo.com it resolves to: http://www.web-site-ecommerce-consulting.com/websitedesign/

What am I doing wrong?

Tom Kraak Thursday, April 23, 2009 at 2:49 PM Tom Kraak says:

@ Jmajor - Besides configuring your DNS, you also need to go into IIS and add www.wvosvo.com and wvosvo.com as a host headers. If you do not have direct access to IIS, you should be able to do this via your hosting control panel or have your hosting provider do it for you.

Deep Tuesday, May 12, 2009 at 7:51 AM Deep says:

Hi Guys,

We are planning to launch one On Demand Portal Solution, based upon DNN 4.9 and the idea is to use multiple portals on single site. But i found one article scaring me to hell while doing this.

http://www.powerdnn.com/AtomicSLA/InformationCenter/tabid/333/ServiceID/3211/Default.aspx

I'm looking for your views and advices on how to mitigate these risks or what is the best way to handle this situation.

Thanx in Advance.

Regards,
Deep

Tom Kraak Tuesday, May 12, 2009 at 8:10 AM Tom Kraak says:

@ Deep - I do share some of the concern mentioned in the PowerDNN article in regards to multiple websites on one DNN installation.

What exactly do you have in mind for your "On Demand Portal Solution?"

Deep Wednesday, May 13, 2009 at 4:43 AM Deep says:

We have created one HR Portal [custom built app on top of DNN 4.9] and we would like to offer it On Demand model, means companies can just register online [we create a new portal] for trial and after one month if they like it, they pay the subscription and continue using the application. Our model is to offer the solution at low reccuring fee and if we have to setup new instance of DNN for every new free trial, the whole economics will go bit hay wire.

Not sure what is the good way of have the ease of automatic online setup and cost control.

regards,

Manish Friday, August 28, 2009 at 8:39 AM Manish says:

I have site called

itexnora.org/dotnetnuke

now i want to create new site for V2 in same installation of DotnetNuke

i have another domain
ngogaurdian.org
which is pointing to the dotenetnuke folder of root directory where i have my whole dotnetnuke installation

i have created new portal but it is pointing to same site still
now

how can i resolve

its running on hosting server if i need to do any setting please guide me.

Thanks
Manish



Robert Thursday, November 05, 2009 at 7:37 PM Robert says:

Hey guys,

I have the same problem as Manish!
I've created new portals but I can't access them, only the main domain, the one that I used when I installed DNN.
I've tried to explain it to my hosting company(ixwebhosting), but they don't get it... they advised me to set up alias or redirect but non of those worked...

Please post if you have any solution!

Thanks,
Robert

Tom Kraak Thursday, November 05, 2009 at 7:45 PM Tom Kraak says:

Robert - send me your contact info using this form and I'll be in touch to help you out with this.

Once resolved, I'll post the solution here.

manish Friday, November 06, 2009 at 5:27 AM manish says:

DHi tom

My mail id is
manish.agravat.it@gmail.com



John Vetter Sunday, November 08, 2009 at 10:43 PM John Vetter says:

I am trying to setup multiple portals and I'm running into a strange problem. I have the Parent portal setup and it goes to a domain like somedomain.com/dnn. I have a second portal setup and I have the domain point to the dnn folder but the domain is like mynewdomain.com. When I try and go to the new domain it keeps saying resource not found. When I put in mynewdomain.com/dnn after switching it in the portal setup and point my domain to the root it works. Has anyone seen any issues like that before. Any help would be appreciated.
John

Tom Kraak Monday, November 09, 2009 at 5:54 PM Tom Kraak says:

@ John - somedomain.com/dnn is NOT a parent portal, but a child portal. Parent portals have their own domain names like mynewdomain.com.

Ismet Dumlupinar Thursday, December 10, 2009 at 4:29 AM Ismet Dumlupinar says:

I have updated my tutorials for Godaddy users,
It will let you have,
DNN installed at root path of your hosting account.
Multiple parent portals with your own unique domains.
And free support from me as well :)

ergolargo Tuesday, December 15, 2009 at 12:02 PM ergolargo says:

Hi Tom

Rather than organising the DNS record in advance of creating a parent portal, would it be sufficient to have an entry in the HOSTS file on the web server hosting the DNN instance - could this be a method to resolve a parent portal's URL to the correct IP address, to allow the parent portal install to complete successfully. In other words, does DNN just need to check that the URL name resolves to the right IP address during the parent portal creation process, and therefore the HOSTS file entry could be used to short cut this verification, in the absence of a DNS record on a name server. This would allow the portal to be created in DNN, and development to proceed, BEFORE the URL is registered on an external name server - of course the web site would only be accessible from machines on the local LAN with the correct HOSTS file entry.

Am I understanding this right?

Regards

Sh@wn Monday, January 04, 2010 at 1:20 PM Sh@wn says:

Child Portals - get rid of the "?alias="

Let's say that on your corporate intranet, you decided to use the childportal feature of DNN. Unfortunately, when you navigate to the child portal at www.myportal.com/child, you get a URL that says www.myportal.com/default.aspx?alias=child. This isn't the end of the world, but it looks all codey.

Boring Background Information
The reason this happens is that child portals are handled initially by IIS. When you navigate to what IIS sees as a child directory with no page associated, the URL Rewriter module never sees it. It looks straight to the file system and when it doesn't see the folder there, we are going to get a file not found error. In order to get around this, the clever folk who created the sub-portal feature, made it so that when you create a child portal, the system actually creates a physical folder in the file system with a default.aspx dropped in to send you back to the main default.aspx with the alias attached as a parameter and viola, the rewriter module picks up the request and we are back in business. Pretty clever, huh?

Easy Trick
Find the file folder that the child portal creation made (in this case the folder would be called "child"). Inside you will find a file called "default.aspx". Open the default.aspx in notepad and look for the lines of code that say (it should be near the bottom).

DomainName = ServerPath & "Default.aspx?alias=" & DomainName

Response.Redirect(DomainName,True)

Remark out the response.redirect line and replace it with a server.transfer call like so:

'Response.Redirect(DomainName,True)
Server.Transfer(DomainName,True)

Save the file and navigate to your child portal. Now the location change happens on the server instead of the client and the result is an unchanged URL. If you want to make this change permanent to this installation of DNN and have this be the default behavior for all child portals, you can edit the subhost.aspx file in the /Portals/_default/ folder and make the edit there as this is the file that the framework uses to copy into the created folder.

Have Fun!

from: http://www.arrownuke.com/Blog/tabid/295/EntryID/18/Default.aspx

Rapid Sahre Tuesday, January 26, 2010 at 8:14 AM Rapid Sahre says:

I am using Plesk and having big trouble getting my additional portals to work. My original portal is impetusgroup.ca. I am trying to configure another portal using DOTNETNUKE. As per your words above I have created alias and then attemped to create shafiq.islam.impetusgroup.ca. However, when I type in address in address bar it brings to my original site.HELP!!!

Tom Kraak Tuesday, January 26, 2010 at 10:38 AM Tom Kraak says:

@ Rapid

You need to ensure that impetusgroup.ca and shafiq.islam.impetusgroup.ca point to the same IP address by adding the appropriate CNAMEs to your DNS record.

charles Monday, March 01, 2010 at 8:58 AM charles says:

Hi,

I am having the same problem as some of the others. I am allways redirected back to my home portal from my parent portal.

I am quite confident I have followed the correct procedures for setting up a parent portal, including my dns setup.

Any suggestions?

Are

Tom Kraak Monday, March 01, 2010 at 9:03 AM Tom Kraak says:

@ Charles - do you see the newly created portal under Host > Portals?

charles Monday, March 01, 2010 at 8:26 PM charles says:

I see the newly created portal under hosts.

The Portal Alias for the this portal is: redmondgadsby.ca

I am using Dotnetnuke Version 05.02.02 (73).

charles Tuesday, March 02, 2010 at 9:09 AM charles says:

I am beginning to think that my install is incorrect. I have tried all suggestions in this post.

One thing I do notice though, is that when I create a new portal, I do not have a default.axpx file created.

Could this have something to do with my permission

charles Thursday, March 04, 2010 at 12:47 PM charles says:

I am still having difficulties. I can only access my new portal through the portal editor ie host->portal.

Not sure where to go from here.

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Tom Kraak Friday, March 05, 2010 at 3:50 PM Tom Kraak says:

Charles - to assist you further, I need to take a closer look at your site. Use the Contact link at the top of the page to get in touch.

Bill Swanson Thursday, March 11, 2010 at 8:44 PM Bill Swanson says:

Many thanks for the help! I was about 1/3 of the way down, before I comprehended what needed to be done.

To point IIS to the new portal:
Computer Management
Default Web Site (using virtual directories)
New:
Virtual directory
Alias: New Site Name
Path: E:\Inetpub\wwwroot\dnnv5
Permissions: Read

Cheers!!!

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