DotNetNuke Tip: Production using SSL, development not using SSL

Earlier this year I was doing some work on a website of mine that runs on DNN, and has SSL enabled. I copied the database and file system, and set these up on my development machine, Vista Ultimate. I ran into a problem though, I couldn't actually get the site to load, I had all the usual configured properly: a) file permissions b) IIS virtual directory under classic app pool c) database setup and the web.config modified

No matter what I did whenever I tried to access the site I would get an error page saying the site couldn't be found. This didn't make sense, because I had a standard DNN install on my machine and it worked great.

Well tonight I go to working with the site again, intent on figuring out the issue. The site was on 4.6.2 so I upgraded it to 4.8.2, the upgrade actually worked fine, the pages loaded, the scripts ran. So I got to thinking, if it's not the IIS settings it must be something inside of DNN itself, then it struck me. The site was running SSL, a quick check of the Tabs table in the database verified that, so I ran an update script and turned off SSL for all the pages.

Pull up IE7 and hit the site locally and boom, it works!

So here's the tip: If you're pulling down a production site that runs SSL and you're having trouble configuring the site in a test environment, be sure to disable SSL in DNN!

Update: Doh! Michael just pointed out that he posted the same thing back in February! That sure woulda saved me some time. Now, why I missed his post I don't know, it was probably back when the feeds weren't working on dnn.com