Restoring a sitefinity site from production to local

Question

I am trying to perform an upgrade and in order to do so, I need to restore my production site on a local machine, upgrade the site and deploy back to production.

The process for restoring the site sounds straightforward but I think there are some steps/configurations I am still missing. This is what I have done so far:

1. Downloaded the website files, saved them on local under C:\inetpub\wwwroot
2. Downloaded the database full backup (.bak file) and restored it in MS SQL Server Management Studio
3. Changed the Connection Strings to:

<connectionStrings> <add connectionString="Data Source=MSSQLSERVER;Database=MyDatabaseName;Integrated Security=False;providerName="System.Data.SqlClient" dbType="MsSql" name="Sitefinity" /> </connectionStrings>

But that didn't do it and I am getting a Server Error in '/' Application Runtime error.

What did I miss? My first guess is the Connection String not being setup properly. Do I need User ID and Password in the string if the database in local?

Answer 1

If integrated security is false you should provide userId and password so that the app can connect to the sql server.

This is a good place to start: https://www.connectionstrings.com/

Answer 2

If you want to verify the connection string, check the configuration.

SQL Server Configuration Manager -> SQL Server Services -> Verify SQL Server is running, properties on SQL Server -> Host Name / Name should be verified under service.

Besides verifying the connection name, this post has a lot of good information for you to try.