Hi,

I want to add a parent portal to develop a site for an existing url, which is currently pointing to the live site which is going to be replaced.

If I create a parent portal with the current live url as an alias, when I click on that I obviously get directed to the current live site.

How then can I create the new parent portal, with a temp url so I don't get directed to the live site, and be able to access / develop it using dnn?

I think the issue here is confusion between Parent and Child.

In my opinion, the only difference is the URL that you use to access the portal.

I'd create the portal as a child of the Host (first) portal.

For example:  http://192.168.1.102/newportal

Use the child portal address for development.  When you're ready to cut-over, add a portal alias to the child portal (http://www.newportal.com) and make sure you update the DNS records to point to the new IP address.