Installing DotNetNuke on Windows XP

In this article I will be covering the installation of DotNetNuke on Windows XP. For this installation the following items were used, listed in the order in which they were installed.

1. Windows XP with service pack 1, and subsequent updates as appropriate
2. Visual Studio 2003
3. MSDE revision 2000A
4. Microsoft SQL Web Data Administrator Version 2.0
5. DotNetNuke version 2.1.2

We shall begin by setting up IIS. Add the path for DotNetNuke to the IIS directory, for example

C:\InetPub\wwwroot\DotNetNuke

Unzip the recently obtained DotNetNuke souce zip file into this directory.  This obtainable from http://www.dotnetnuke.com/.  Note registration is required. 

At this stage only one file needs to be edited, web.config, to define the sql server (in our case msde) database connection. No further configuration of the DotNetNuke source code is required. Later we shall point our web browser at our DotNetNuke directory under IIS and DotNetNuke will make the necessary configurations including configuring the database.

The default setting for directory security under Windows XP is hidden.  We need this to be revealed so that we can add full access rights for the user aspnet.

From an explorer window select tools and folder options

 Under the View tab scroll to the last item, "Use Simple File Sharing (Recommended)", ensure that this is not checked.

Using SQL Web Data Administrator ensure that  there is a table for use by DotNetNuke, calling it DotNetNuke is a good idea. A dedicated user, for example dnnUser, and password to make the connection, rather than using the SQL server/MSDE SA account. Configuring MSDE is covered in another article found here.

Now edit the file web.config in the dotnetnuke directory,  There are two instances of the configuration and connection details for the SQL database connection, one in the appSettins section and one in the  providers section. Change the values of MYTABLENAME, MYUSERNAME and MYPASSWORD to suit your settings.

<appSettings>
    <add key="connectionString" value="Server=localhost;Database=MYTABLENAME;uid=MYUSERNAME;pwd=MYPASSWORD;"/>
<appSettings>

<add name = "SqlDataProvider"
    type = "DotNetNuke.Data.SqlDataProvider, DotNetNuke.SqlDataProvider"
    connectionString = "Server=localhost;Database=MYTABLENAME;uid=MYUSERNAME;pwd=MYPASSWORD;"
    providerPath = "~\Providers\DataProviders\SqlDataProvider\"
    objectQualifier = ""
    databaseOwner = "dbo"
    upgradeConnectionString = ""
/>

Ensure that the debug setting is set to enable debug support.

-- set debugmode to false for running application -->
<compilation debug="true" />