Hi

I am maintaining this website created using dotnetnuke. I made a few modifications in the skin, through the user-friendly Site-wizard, and applied them, which then led to an error, and now the website will not come up. On typing the basic site name, http://steps.tamu.edu, it is immediately directed to the following site with the message "an error has occurred". http://steps.tamu.edu/nuke/Default.aspx?tabid=36&error=Object+reference+not+set+to+an+instance+of+an+object.&content=0

Please can anybody suggest where the problem might lie? Do i need to make changes in the skin.css files?

Submit

Thanks,
Redot

Another suggestion after getting the site back.  When applying a skin for the first time create a new page that isn't the home page or login page and apply the new skin just to that page. That way if the skin crashes DNN its only crashing the one page and you can still remove it via the pages item under the admin menu.

No, don't do that if you're using the default DNN-Blue skin already. The deal is that DNN will default back to that skin if it can't find the skin specified in site settings. If however you have somehow modified and broken the default blue skin, then it will have nothing to fall back on if you remove that.

So, if you are in fact using DNN-Blue skin and broke it, then you would be wiser to upload that again, not via the skins menu if that has vanished, but by ftp. You can extract the installation archive and upload the skin files to /Portals/_default/Skins/DNN-Blue and the matching container files to /Portals/_default/Containers/DNN-Blue. 

 Two notes:

1. If you are not in fact using and have not broken the default blue skin, then you can do as has been suggested and remove the broken skin.. but you'll have to know which skin it is. Browse the /Portals/_default/Skins/ folder and see if anything is familiar. Do the same in /Portals/_default/Containers/
2. Never touch a DNN portal unless you have a solid and quick backup- and restore system in place for both the filesystem and the database. You're taking a huge risk otherwise.

Rob