DotNetNuke Info: The difference between Parent and Child portals

Published Monday, June 23, 2008 8:32 PM

So, in training classes I always get the question "What is the difference between parent and child portals?" Well, the Professional DotNetNuke 4 book defines the two pretty well, but me being a programmer and lazy, I wanted to come up with a more simple description.

Here's what I've come up with:

Parent portals require configuration in IIS, either though the configuration of a virtual directory, or a website. Child portals will create a directory in the root of your DNN website, placing a default.aspx file in the directory, and then handling URL requests through the URL handler.

A tad more info, child portals will reside within (under) whatever domain you've created the child portal. Parent portals can exist in their own domain, or as a subdomain of another domain, or as a directory (virtual) under another website/domain.

Do you have DotNetNuke questions? Email them to me at chris.hammond@dotnetnuke.com with the subject of "DotNetNuke Tips and Tricks Questions" and I will try to post questions and answers here on my blog.

 

by Chris Hammond
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Comments

# LukkhaCoder said on Tuesday, June 24, 2008 11:19 PM

Chris,

Can we configure the directory where the sub directories for the child portals are created? By default as you mentioned they are created in the root folder of the application.

# Phil Speth said on Tuesday, July 29, 2008 4:04 PM

One thing I have run into with adding additional Portals to a DNN install is that it will not accept the same user name that exists on another portal.

For me this absolutely kills the usefulness in many cases.  Is this a solid limitation with DNN or is there a workaround?

# Chris Hammond said on Tuesday, July 29, 2008 4:30 PM

Phil, it will accept the same username, but only if you also use the same password.

# Ryan Doom - Web Ascender said on Tuesday, August 19, 2008 8:55 PM

We have a couple DNN installs that have tons of DotNetNuke sites running on them as Parent portals.  We set that install up on their own IP address and that site is the default.  So any domain that goes to that IP goes to that DNN install.  That way we don't have to configure them in IIS all the time, makes it a lot easier for people around the office to create new Parent sites.  

# Ayo Falokun said on Saturday, February 07, 2009 2:54 AM

Ryan,

Thanks for your entry. Could you please send me the steps to having a single DNN install handle multiple domain names. I have a dedicated server with 4 IP addresses. I would really appreciate your help with this.

I work on the web site of a church with 8,000 churches worldwide and need to support web sites for various geographies of our church - some have their own names and some only require a small subsite on DNN with 1- 5 pages.

Any help on this would be appreciated.

Thanks,

Ayo

614-315-2293

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