If you first pointed to your DNN site on the web server as localhost (e.g., http://localhost/DNNsite), you need to log in as Host and add the appropriate Alias at the bottom of Admin | Site Settings.

Hi Andy, thanks for the response.

 

I did create an alias, two in fact. one is the name of the folder where the site files exist under the wwwroot folder in IIs, the other is a different alias entirely. neither seems to work. I did also create web sharing on the first actual folder using the same name. It is an XP machine that this is installed upon but I was able to successfully install the Community Starter Kit from .net framework 1.1 fame and it worked fine. Could it be permission issues? I've disabled my firewall with no apparent improvement.

The alias will need to match the hostname/virdir, so a DC can resolve it. Alternatively the IP can be used in the form of  XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX/virdir.

What does the browser say when you try to access it from outside the Web Server? 

You might try creating helloworld.htm (or helloworld.txt) which has just Hello World in it, and putting it into the same virtual directory as the DNN site.  If you can see it from outside the web server, you know there's a dnn issue.  If you cannot see it, you know there's a more general problem.

You could also do the same with your own helloworld.aspx to see if it is a .Net permissions issue.

I can see a regular .htm page fine... which is why I think it might be ASP.net permissions. What account permissions are needed on which folders to allow browsing from other machines within my intranet domain? I will try the hello world.aspx idea in the meantime. Thanks for the input.

Hi folks, thanks for the continuing help.

OK well here is what I now know. I have done 2 seperate installs of DNN4 on my XPSP2 pc. both are installed to http://localhost/.... Both can be seen and operate on the host machine. Both have aliases defined, both can be browsed to by other machines with a helloworld.aspx type file located in each installation's root file so presumably the installation operates and the aliases are valid. But when I try browsing to the default.aspx page in either I get page cannot be displayed or you are not authorized to view this page type error messages. I am using Visual Web Developer and SQL Server 2005 Express. I named the databases in the App_Data something other than database.mdf ( it was actually the alias names) but made the two appropriate changes in the SQL connection strings in web.config to reflect the proper files.

Because the helloworld.aspx files work correctly but don't have any database involvement, I expect that it might be a SQL issue. When I installed the SQL2005 Express, I used all the defaults including presumably making the default named instance SQLExpress but understand that User instances are operating here and that there might be a permission deficiency with the ASPNET or ananymous user accounts as they relate to SQL rather than IIS.

Any ideas along database instances permissions lines?

Hal Saville

 

>  Both have aliases defined, both can be browsed to by other machines with a helloworld.aspx type file located in each installation's root file so presumably the installation operates and the aliases are valid.

No.  The DNN Alias has no bearing on a Hello World ASPX file accessed directly on the URL, even in the same folder/site.  DNN's alias is used solely within DNN, as part of the URL rewriting.

If you set up DNN from the localhost, the installation was done from http://localhost/{DNN_Virtual_Directory} where  {DNN_Virtual_Directory}is the name you gave to the virtual directory for DNN, usually DotNetNuke.  That means if you type in  http://localhost/{DNN_Virtual_Directory} while browsing from the server, you will get to the site correctly.

But "localhost" is only valid on the physical web server.  Off the web server, you need to access it with a host name that points to the server's IP address or the IP address itself.  That means you would access it as http://{Hostname}/{DNN_Virtual_Directory}/.  Only DNN doesn't know where the heck that is, because the DNN installation is for "localhost" so DNN redirects your browser to  http://localhost/{DNN_Virtual_Directory}.  Only that doesn't work because you are not on the web server.

To fix this, you add an Alias in DNN as posted several times.  This alias must match the URL you are requesting for DNN to process it correctly.  So if you are accessing your DNN site as http://www.sample.com/DotNetNuke/Default.aspx, the Alias you need to add is www.sample.com/DotNetNuke.

It's definitley not a SQL permissions issue, you'd see an ASP.NET error.  If you're seeing a Hello World page it's not an IIS permission error.

If this doesn't fix you, post the exact URL you access the site with from the server, the exact URL you attempt to access it with from off the server and the exact Aliases you have configured in DNN.

Jeff

THANK YOU.

I've added the alias as you said to be:

192.168.0.253/the_name_of_my_site

Worked perfectly! So, everytime I move this to other server I have to add the alias for the DNN instalation like for example:

mydomin.com/mysite

Well, thank you for the fast response. You deserve a medal!

Hi Jeff,

You nailed it! I was making the proper reference from the remote machine but as you said it was renaming to localhost on the remote machine and not resolving. Thanks for the help!

 

Hal