Hi

i've recently need to move a dnn installation from one server to another. I only need to move the actually site files; the database did not move.

after i downloaded the site and then uploaded the site to the new server, users could not login. this included the host and admin accounts.

i'm assuming this is to with how dnn encrypts/decrypts user's passwords. However i did manage to resolve this by doing the following.

after site is moved

1. register a new user
2. use the script at http://www.dnnskin.com/KnowledgeBas...sword.aspx to set the password of the host account to the password for the account you just created.
3. login as host using the password of the new user account.

unfortunately ALL passwords are now invalid. i got errors when i tried to change the password via the user management section. i had to 'reset password' to a random password then 'change password'. for a few users i suppose its no big deal, but when there a large number of users this could be a major pain.

i really hope i was doing something wrong rather than this being the 'procedure' for moving the site from server to server.

i noticed in issue 22 moving a site from local to live, this problem didn't appear to happen.


Regards
Sean

They key here is how you downloaded all of the site files and then uploaded them to the new site, and you didn't change the database then this shouldn't have happened.

The "machine key" setting in your web.config file is the thing that has an effect on passwords.

If creating a user with a known password and using that to adjust the password of the host or admin worked, then I would suspect that you somehow didn't actually copy web.config, and that you have a different web.config on the new site.

Your best bet would be to try this again, remembering that you've now changed the host password and will have to go throught that again.

At first i thought the machine key was the culprit as i'm aware of the issues with this. However, upon verifying that the web.config files were in fact identical except for the connection string which the server part changed from (local) to the actual ip (the site and db were on the same machine and i moved the site to another server).

And to make sure i wasn't losing my mind, i put the web.config with the changed connection string onto the original site and that site still worked fine.

lucky there are only a handful of regular users and we have reset all passwords and sent out a notification for them to login and reset their passwords.

you're right, this should not have happened and i don't know why it has. but in case anyone does encounter this issue, the link i posted is a life-saver .