Jason

You may find this topic very hard to get a response to as I don’t think this is a very common practice.

There are those that have setup multiple blogs that access specific tables, such as the users table but not the entire db.

I am sure this is possible but you may find it more problematic and prone to other issue rather then just doing a backup and restore of db’s for design testing.

The fact of the matter is, if you are doing a lot of changes to your blog, you are going to really want a completely stand alone test blog that can be “beat-up” and brought back without fear of killing your main.

Maybe there are other underlying issues with IIS itself. Guess you could try running filemon to see if that provides more clues.

Is this your only WP site in IIS or are you running another instance?

For the sake of a test, I think I would install a another instance of WP and test the process…who knows, may be a combination if things.

What does the server event log show…any weird errors that could give us a clue as to where to start looking?

Can you make a detailed trace of errors in IIS?

On the website, choose Failed Request and Tracing Rules.
Click Add, then follow the assistant.

Have you had a chance to review 5 Explicit Tutorials on Converting WordPress to CMS yet?

Are you wanting to configure the WP install and create a temporary index while you do so?

If so, you might be able to use a plugin to display a temporary maintenance page:
maintenance-mode
offlinemode

You can also create a new start page in the cpanel File Manager but you may also have top set a new default file as the WP index.php will usually load first by default.

A quick Google Search yields many results for Cpanel File manager Tutorials.

There are several tutorials about this plugin available, this is just one:

All in One SEO plugin Tutorial

Is there a web.config file in the root with syntax that might the causing the issue?

Do you see a more detailed error if you run from IIS directly?

I usually have something like this in the WP installs I have running on server 2008.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<configuration>
  <system.webServer>
<rewrite>
    <rules>
        <rule name="Main Rule" stopProcessing="true">
            <match url=".*" />
            <conditions logicalGrouping="MatchAll">
                <add input="{REQUEST_FILENAME}" matchType="IsFile" negate="true" />
                <add input="{REQUEST_FILENAME}" matchType="IsDirectory" negate="true" />
            </conditions>
            <action type="Rewrite" url="index.php" />
        </rule>
    </rules>
</rewrite>
 </system.webServer>
</configuration>

It sounds like something is still in the database even after you disabled the plugins and themes that is causing some issues.

I think what I would do is start from a fresh install again, create a backup of the working WP install and start getting things installed and tested one by one. There is obviously some plugin or theme that is failing so if you have to track down the “needle in the hay stack” then it may require you to create many backups in between plugins while you test the ability to login and logout of the admin after the installs

Doing it this way may take a bit more time but will save you when/if it fails again and you have to restore.

Good luck

Take a look at Moving WordPress

This resource may help.

You might also look through these

Good luck.

Why are you not able to create a 301 redirect in your htaccess file?

Adding Extra Sidebar to your WordPress Theme

This should get you going in the right direction:

Maybe you could use some like this in your htaccess file:

RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://gow2portal.com/$1 [R=301,L]

You can download them with an FTP client to your computer, edit directly with a text editor and upload them back to your server.