I'm using Visual Studio 2008 Pro on Windows Server 2008 Standard. Have already reported some VS2008 bugs to Microsoft which they've confirmed as bugs. In particular, opening a project in VS2008 via IIS website can be working then stop working - it's flaky and unreliable. I am now opening projects via the file system and avoiding use of any virtual dirs as subdirs so that dir tree structure not dependent on IIS. This approach seems much more reliable in VS2008 until they fix the bugs.

Although I'm reasonably experienced with Microsoft technologies, I am relatively new to DNN. So one of the key development questions I have is on best practices for development work particular to DNN when moving back and forth as necessary between development server and production server.

If I set up a bunch of different portals (all under one host) as web apps under "localhost" on the development server, can these be readily mapped to different domains when moving to production server? For example, can localhost/app1 and localhost/app2 move readily to www.app1domain.com and www.app2domain.com? Can aliases be setup so that both localhost/app1 and www.app1domain.com are recognized and processed as same portal?

Also can the moves be done successfully with just detaching the database on the development server, copying over both the database and web app files, and then re-attaching the database and connecting up IIS on the production server? This would be in a situation where all portals on host are new and not yet populated with user data.

Any comments on general development best practices particular to DNN would be appreciated? Links to any FAQs on the topic?

Thanks,

CT 

Thanks.

Any links to any FAQs or blogs discussing the different modules in the VS Content Installer for the Startup Kit of the current version of DNN 4.82.?

I don't believe it's necessary to install all of the packages. I'm going to guess that just the Web App Framework plus VB modules are sufficient? Where is discussion of Dynamic versus Simple Dynamic Module?

Thanks again,

CT 

Thanks for comments and link. But link points to a discussion based on use of Team Foundation Server (TFS).

Although I did have the VS2005 version of TFS with my MSDN Universal subscription back then, I decided that it was too expensive to justify maintaining the level of subscription necessary to get TFS with VS2008. So now I just have MSDN Professional Premium and no longer have access to TFS (unless I'm mistaken on what products come with which subscription).

I also choose to put money into some alternative development tools such as Altova XMLSpy and others. Perhaps the big shops can afford to buy everything but the solo independents have to watch their development tool budgets more carefully.

I hope that all Core Team Members will be very conscious of this matter when offering advice and leadership to DNN developers who are not members of the Inner Sanctum!

Thanks much for your concern...