An Introduction To DotNetNuke

DotNetNuke is a Content Management System or CMS. It is written in the Microsoft Visual Basic .NET programming language.

A Content Management System allows you to get a professional website up and running quickly.  It provides functionality to easily manage the users of a website, the content, design aspects, and many other attributes of a website.

With DotNetNuke, it’s not only easy to get a website up and running quickly but to manage and maintain its content.

For developers, specifically Visual Basic developers, DotNetNuke offers a programmer to get started with web development quickly and learning MIcrosoft’s ASPX technology.  Since a VB programmer understands Visual Basic they’ll be able to pick up the programming languate Visual Basic .NET fairly quick.

To get started read my article 4 Programming Languages To Help You Become A Programmer.  Download the freely available Visual Web Developer 2008 Express Edition by Microsoft.  Then head over to the DotNetNuke website and download the Install Package of DotNetNuke.

Here’s the quickest way to get started:

1. Download and install the Microsoft Visual Web Developer 2008 Express Edition.  This can be a pretty long install and I accept all the defaults during install.  Especially the Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Express option.  You’ll need to install it so you can run DotNetNuke.
2. Download the DotNetNuke Install Package and unzip it to C:\DotNetNuke.
3. Fire up Microsoft Visual Web Developer and select File -> Open Web Site… and select the folder C:\DotNetNuke.  Click Open.  This will open DotNetNuke as a web site in Visual Web Developer.
4. Once the web site is open in the development system, press Ctrl-F5.  This will start and run the web site wizard without the debugging system.
5. You’ll notice an ASP.NET Development Server pop-up in the lower right-hand corner of your window.  This is the built in web server that comes installed with Visual Web Developer so there’s no need for Microsoft’s IIS web server.
6. After the web site has been compiled you’ll be presented with the first wizard screen to install DotNetNuke.  On this screen the installation method default is “Typical”.  Change it to “Auto” and click the Next link.  There is a possible issue with the “Typical” install that hangs on a screen where the database scripts get run.  To avoid this just select the “Auto” method.
7. The install will complete and you’ll have one web page that displays the output of the install with a link at the bottom that says, “Click Here To Access Your Portal.”  Below is your DotNetNuke web site after a successful install.

Click image for larger view

So what do have?  We installed the development environment so we can develop custom modules in the future for DotNetNuke.  We downloaded and installed DotNetNuke.  We opened the web site on our local hard drive at C:\DotNetNuke, compiled and ran the wizard to setup DotNetNuke.

This article was about running DotNetNuke on your computer.  There is a bunch of other stuff to do and take into consideration to run a DotNetNuke site for public or private consumption.  I’ll go over that type of stuff in a future article.  So make sure you subscribe to my blog by email or by RSS Reader.

Here’s the video walk thru.

Note: When you’re installing Microsoft Visual Web Developer 2008 Express Edition, you might get a pop-up window that says something about needing .NET Framework 2.0 and you’re running 3.5. Just answer yes that you want to go ahead and use .NET Framework
3.5.

More about: Content Management System, dotnetnuke, microsoft, visual basic, visual web developer

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