I'm setting up a website for a friend using DotNetNuke (DNN). DNN has been on my radar screen for a few years and a couple of friends have highly recommended it. So I took the occasion to try it out.
I've run into different installation issues, most of them revolving around the lack of full trust to the website directories. Today I ran into a new one. After installing the website on a shared web server, I logged in as the host account, set up the skin, and went to add a module to the main page.
Much to my chagrin, most of the desktop modules were missing from the module list. For example, it didn't list IFrame or Text/HTML. The only entries were Account Login, Banners, Search Input, Search Results, and User Account.
Searching in the DNN forums revealed a thread about this very same problem.
This problem was self-inflicted due to my own ignorance of DNN. A pre-install DNN has a directory named Install\Modules and that directory contains one zip file per standard desktop module delivered with DNN. For example, the file IFrame_3.1_Install.zip contains the installation files for the IFrame module.
When the DNN installation runs, it removes each zip file after the module is installed.
I had installed and configured the website locally. So my Install\Modules directory was empty save for a lone file named Placeholder.txt.
I uploaded my directory structure as is to the shared web server and then ran the installation. There were no zip files in Install\Modules so no modules were installed.
The solution was to upload the missing zip files and then go to URL http://[domain]/Install/install.aspx?mode=installresources
Doing so caused DNN to install the modules.
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Sean Winstead
Tags: DNN