8 Simple Steps for Installing DNN 4.3.2 on the root of a GoDaddy.com account from the absolute beginning

First things first, before we get into it all let’s go ahead and clear the air about all the assumptions covered in this article, as well as define the terms we’ll be using.

PRE-INSTALLATION INFO: The GoDaddy.com Stuff First

About The Root Drive

When we are talking about the “root” drive of your GoDaddy.com hosting account, what this really means is “/YourUsername”

Review the two figures below to see why this can be confusing to some of us out there

Figure 1: Viewing the “ROOT” of a GoDaddy hosting account via Internet Explorer

Figure 2: Viewing the “ROOT” of a GoDaddy hosting account via FTP utility.

About The Control Panel

When you are creating directories for the DotNetNuke installation, these MUST be done through the Control Panel. In the scope of this article, the Control Panel will refer to the hosting manager control panel located within your GoDaddy account.

Figure 3: Logging into your GoDaddy.com account – THIS IS NOT THE CONTROL PANEL

After you have successfully logged in, Select “Hosting & Servers” à “My Hosting Account”

Figure 4: Inside your account manager

Figure 5: Accessing your domain control panel

About Creating Directories

Some of you may wonder why I am including this, and all I can say is I made every mistake in the book when I was figuring all of this out – ‘nuff said?? J

Ok, some of you are thinking I can just create the directories via my FTP utility. Well…you’re right! BUT…you can’t set the permissions on the folders as you will need. Yes, I know your FTP manager has a feature that allows you to set the folder permissions, but that just won’t work in this case. Trust me on this one, if you want a first time successful install, just create the directories via the Control Panel

Figure 6: Using the Directory Management feature of the GoDaddy control panel

Figure 7: Creating a Directory via the Control Panel

Figure 8: Verify your Directory name and permissions

After you have verified the correct settings, click ADD. You will be redirected to your directory manager screen. Notice the “Pending Setup” status. You will need to give the GoDaddy servers time to process your request. This can take up to 15 minutes or so.

Figure 9: Viewing the new directory

Figure 10: Viewing the completed directory setup

Figure 11: Viewing the new directory via IE FTP

Figure 12: Viewing the new directory via FTP utility

About The SQL Database

Creating the database

In your control panel, click on Databases à SQL Server. You will need to create a new database. You will be asked to supply a user name and a password. The username and password you create will be used to make the connection between the DotNetNuke website and your database. You will also be asked if you would like to create a DSN. You will not need this for your website. However, advanced users may have a need for this and may choose to create this here. You are also asked if you would like to install FrontPage extensions. Again, advanced users make your own call. For the rest of you, do not install the front page extensions as they have been known to make life miserable from time to time. Finally, you are also asked whether you want the ASPNET membership files installed. Just leave this unchecked and let the DotNetNuke install do it for you. Once you have created your database you will be returned to this screen and the status will say, “Pending Setup”. Again, you may have to wait up to 15 minutes for this to change to “Setup”

Figure 13: Creating the SQL Database

Figure 14: Viewing the SQL Database Manager

Connection Strings

Once you have an all-go on your SQL Database, you can retrieve your connection string information at any time by clicking on the “view connection string” icon.

Figure 15: Viewing the connection string

Database Management

Once you have created your database, you can access and manage it via the online manager. You can do this by clicking on “Open Manager” (next to the connection string icon). You will be redirected to a login screen for the online database management interface. You will need to use the username and password you supplied when you created the database. (Note: You can find your username in your connection string). Click on Connection and log in

Figure 16: Logging into the Database Manager

Figure 17: Working in the Database Manager

PRE-INSTALLATION INFO: The DotNetNuke Stuff

About the Modules

Again, this one may seem obvious, but like I said earlier…I made every mistake possible, so I’m covering all the bases here!

After several seemingly successful installs, I realized that most of the modules were missing. However, I did have 5 modules available to me and I didn’t know why I would have some and not the others. Anyhow, after piles of pulled hair and several frustrating install/uninstalls, I finally realized that the modules weren’t installing because there weren’t any being uploaded. (Why they weren’t there, I’m still not sure). I finally realized the modules are packaged into zip files that are extracted during the installation of the website. You’ll want to make sure these zip files are there if you want to ensure you have modules waiting for you when your site is created. I unzipped my downloaded DotNetNuke files to the directory C:\DotNetNuke. Regardless, navigate to the unzipped folder with your DotNetNuke files then to à Website à Install à Module

In the module directory, make sure you have zip folders here.

Figure 18: Verifing the modules are available for upload.

About the .config files

DotNetNuke comes with more than one .config file which may be confusing to some, especially those who have never worked with .net web files. Your website will need ONE config file (if you know of a reason why you would use more than one .config file, I would assume you are not a beginner and thus would be out of the scope of this article). The file you will be using will be called “web.config”. Your default download of DotNetNuke will include three .config files: Development, Release, and Web. You will not be using the development or release file, so just pretend like they are not even there or delete them, if you like. If you don’t have a file called Development or Release, don’t worry. If you only have a Development or Release and no Web, that’s cool, too. Just rename of the .config files to web.config.

(Get a copy of the default web.config here)

In your web.config file you will need to open it up and make some modifications. Again, I want to cover all the bases here so I will cover the modifications here. You can open the web.config file with a notepad editor or other program like Visual Studio for editing. Personally, I prefer using Visual Studio as I find the color coding to be very helpful for quickly identifying errors (such as when you are commenting and uncommenting lines).

You will need to modify, at minimum, the Connection String information. The connection string is the line of code that will allow your dotnetnuke website to communicate with your SQL Server database. Without a proper connection, your website will not run. Period.

Modifying <connectionStrings>

Ok, inside the web.config file, locate the <ConnectionString> tag.

<add

name="SiteSqlServer"

connectionString="Data Source=.\SQLExpress;Integrated Security=True;User Instance=True;AttachDBFilename=|DataDirectory|Database.mdf;"

providerName="System.Data.SqlClient" />

<!-- Connection String for SQL Server 2000/2005

<add

name="SiteSqlServer"

connectionString="Server=(local);Database=DotNetNuke;uid=;pwd=;"

providerName="System.Data.SqlClient" />

-->

</connectionStrings>

Figure 19: Locating the default connectionString information

In Figure 19, the default connectionString is for a SQL Express database. This is the connection string you would use if you were using a database that was attached to your website, meaning within your website files. This article will be covering connecting to a remote SQL database. If you are having trouble or would like more information about using a SQL Express database within your DotNetNuke installation, contact me.

Remember the connection string information from creating your SQL Database? You’ll need that information here to modify the web.config properly. In Figure 18 above, you will notice via the color coding that some code is commented out. How do we know? Well, because green is reserved for comments J If you are working in a notepad file, you won’t have color coding, but you can tell it is a comment because it begins with <!-- and closes the comment tag with -- > . In the green code you are going to replace the Server , Database, uid, and pwd values and delete the blue and red code like this:

<!-- Connection String for SQL Server 2000/2005 on my GoDaddy.com hosted account -- >

<add name="SiteSqlServer" connectionString="Server=whsql-v06.prod.mesa1.secureserver.net;Database=DB_72973;uid=DNNapp;pwd=mypassword;"

providerName="System.Data.SqlClient" />

</connectionStrings>

Great, but you’re not quite through yet. Right under the <connectionString> section, you will see the <appSettings> section

Modifying <appSettings>

<!-- Connection String for SQL Server 2000/2005 - kept for backwards compatability - legacy modules

-->

We are going to basically do the same thing we just did, so that we end up with this:

Other Modifications

Because the web.config supplies your website with instructions about how to operate, they are other sections that you may or may not want to modify. You can do a google for more information about these sections as they are beyond the scope of the article, but I thought you should be aware of them anyhow…You know by now, back to covering the bases thing again

Modifying <customErrors mode> (around Line 103): - This setting determines how errors are handled. Possible values to use “Off”, “On” or “RemoteOnly” (This is case sensitive)

Modifying <authentication mode> (around Line 105): - This setting determines how to handle authentication. You can select to use Forms authentication meaning you want people to log into your site to be authenticated or “Windows” which would be appropriate in an intranet setting. For most of you, you will leave this section as is.

</authentication>

<!--

</authentication>

-->

Modifying <objectQualifier> (around Line 287): - The objectQualifier will add a prefix to all the SQL objects created for use within your application.

defaultProvider="SqlDataProvider">

<add

name="SqlDataProvider"

type="DotNetNuke.Data.SqlDataProvider, DotNetNuke.SqlDataProvider"

connectionStringName="SiteSqlServer"

upgradeConnectionString=""

providerPath="~\Providers\DataProviders\SqlDataProvider\"

objectQualifier=""

databaseOwner="dbo"/>

</providers>

</data>

Learn More about the DotNetNuke web.config file

Finally Ready to Start Doing Something!

Alright, now that we are all talking on the same page we can begin the step by step process of installing your DotNetNuke application.

Step One: Go to your Control Panel and create the following directories:

Directory Name	Permissions
Bin	Read, write
Config	Read, write
DesktopModules	Read, Web, Write
Install	Read, Web, Write
Images	Read, Web, Write
Portals	Read, Web, Write

Figure 20: Required directories

Step Two: Create the SQL Database

Step Three: Modify the web.config file

Step Four: Copy SiteUrls.config to the root - In your DotNetNuke folder, go to the config folder (ex: C:\DotNetNuke\Config) and copy the SiteUrls.config to ~\DotNetNuke (up one level) (Note: You may or may not have to do this. If you already have a siteurls.config in the DotNetNuke root folder, then skip this step)

Step Five: Upload the files

In the image below, you can see the directories that we created in the control panel. These folders are empty, but they have the right permissions on them, which is the most important part. We are simply going to FTP all of our local files in the directory over to the root of our GoDaddy site. The amount of time it takes to FTP your site over will depend on your connection speed. Just count on taking a little stretcher right now.

Figure 21: Viewing the local files to upload to the online folder

Step Six: Installing the Website

Once you have completed the FTP transfer, open your browser and type in your website address: www.yourdomain.com

This will begin the website installation process and you should see the installation beginning

Figure 22: Website Installation Log

I know your tempted to click on “Click here to Access Your Portal” …but you’re not quite there yet…

Step Seven: Open the SQL Manager in your Control Panel

Figure 23: Viewing the SQL Database Manager after successful install

(NOTE: I used “dnn” as my objectQualifer…depending on what you used, you may or may not have a prefix on your tables)

Open the PortalAlias table to edit

Figure 24: Editing the PortalAlias table

You will have one record in there named something like “my portal” (if your domain name is already there then skip this step). Edit the record and add www.yourdomain.com as the alias replacing the default value (“my portal”)

Figure 25: New HTTPAlias after domain is added

Step Eight: Now you can navigate to your website and Jump Up and Down and Shout, “Hooray!!”