Moving a WSS3.0 site

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When you need to move a Windows Sharepoint Services 3.0 website from your development environment/server to your production server, your first thought might be "Why don't I just perform a backup on the development server, and then restore this backup to the production server?" At least, that was my first thought. It turns out though that this is not possible, at least not in pre-SP1 versions of WSS3.0.

After spending two months trying to resolve this issue, coming across every error imaginable, I finally managed to achieve the holy "Error 6: Error not Found" (personally, I find the wording on that quite amusing, but what it really means is that the system doesn't know what the error is). After a further three weeks on the phone to Microsoft Professional, I finally was provided with a solution. And here it is, all six steps, in unabridged glory:

  1. Detach the database on the development server and move the .ldf and .mdf database files to a location accessible by the production server.
  2. Attach the database to the SQL Server on the production server.
  3. Create a new web application and remove the content database it created by default.
  4. Attach the development content database to the new site.

At this point, everything should be up and running. If however, as we had, you have applied any hotfixes to your server (in our case, the Daylight Savings patch), a couple of extra steps are needed after 3 above

  1. (If the development box had a hotfix)Apply a hotfix to the production server at least as recent as the one applied to the development box.
  2. Rerun the Sharepoint Technologies Configuration wizard to upgrade the server farm with the new hotfix.
  3. (If both servers now have same hotfixes)Attach the content database again.
  4. (If production server is now more recent)Use stsadm to add the content database with the addcontentdb operation. This is because the adding of the database will require an upgrade of the content database, and so the web based restore wizard won't run in case it times out.
  5. Celebrate.
  6. Eat Pizza and Drink Coke