I am a newbie to DNN so please accept that I may not have understood how DNN stores its files/updates etc.

Basically I am looking for advice/best practice to achieve the following:-

We are a small school/kindergarden with a handful of PCs connected to a Windows 2008 R2 server. I would like to have a development environment whereby we have all PCs/admin able to update the content of our one development DNN site which I presume will reside on our server. Presumably I can then sync our server with a host provider for our live version.

Currently I have installed DNN on the windows server with a SQL Server Express database and can access it from the server only i.e. ournursery.net or via localhost

My question is therefore : Is this how DNN works and I just use DNS or IIS to get to the servers ‘localhost / ournursery.net’ from our connected PCs or do I need to install DNN at the client side PCs (with connection to the remote Database) to share the install (or even shared drives for any files it may update).
OR…

As a CMS should I install at a host provider and use server roles to hide development/updates to the live site?

Finally if DNS/IIS is the way to go, advice on setting up DNS/IIS or a hosts file would be appreciated.

Regards..