What version of the CMS are you working on? I am guessing you like to run you solutoin on IIS Express and not the ordinary IIS.

This change has actually nothing or at least not much with the database of EPiServer. First you should almost neverver ever do any changes directly into the database. 

If your are using a version of CMS, 7.5 or above, you can sett host binding inside episerver admin interface, the website settings area. If you are using an older version of episerver you have an episerver.config or a section of web.config for episerver.config. In this section you can find a siteurl property. 

You need to set these propertys or fix these settings. I also sugest you change your csproj-file, properties, to use IIS Express and also change tha startup url for the project to the prefered adress and port.

I am using CMS 7.5. Yes, I tried using the UI, but that didn't work. The change wouldn't take for some reason. So I had to hack it directly via the db.

I had already set it to use IIS Express, and the start up page runs. I was able to access the CMS area by changing the web.config. As the other question that I posted says, I can see the CMS admin area, but I cannot see the pages yet.

I suspect that EPI still doesn't recognize my role and that is what is preventing the tree to show.