Move Sites Between Production and Development Environment
Posted by ken zheng on October 10, 2008
The recommended approach is to use STSADM -o export to export the site and then to use STSADM -o import to re-import the site afterwards. Alternatively you could set up a content deployment job to deploy the content from one environment to another.
If you do decide to use STSADM -o import to create a new site I recommend that you…
1. Create the Web App in Central Administration.
2. Use STSADM -o createsite to create a blank site collection in the new web application.
3. Use STSADM -o import to import the exported site into the blank site.
Brad said
To move sites (and other Sharepoint assets between dev, UAT, and prod environments, there is also the option now of 3rd party solutions such as ROSS by RepliWeb.