HI all

I just traced down a real PITA problem with the upgrade to 4.08.04. When I hit the site, i was just getting a "object reference not found error" I downloaded the source, put in some debugging lines and put the new dotnetnuke.dll in my sites BIN folder.

I found that in the dotnetnuke.config file there seems to be a new section called <skinningdefaults> Which can look like this.

  <skinningdefaults>
    <skininfo folder="/DNN-Blue/" default="Horizontal Menu - Fixed Width.ascx" admindefault="Horizontal Menu - Fixed Width.ascx" />
    <containerinfo folder="/DNN-Blue/" default="Image Header - Color Background.ascx" admindefault="Image Header - Color Background.ascx" />
  </skinningdefaults>

My dotnetnuke.config file did not have this, but the source version of DNN did. Is this new? It was not in my old copy of this file either. The class "skindefaults" in skindefaults.vb was looking for this section and was not present and was then bombing.. I put it in, and now it works.

If this is new, kind of important to point it out.

THanks

Harold

Hi Brandon,

Thanks for the response! I was dead in the water for days over this...It had updated my db at first, but then I could not navigate to the home page afterwords.

THere really needs to be more documentation on changes  in the web.config file.

Thanks!

Harold

Hi Ryan,

Appreciate the compliment!

The dotnetnuke.config xml file is hydrated into two SkinDefaults objects (Components/Skins/SkinDefaults.vb).  Both are stored as public properties of the Globals module (DefaultSkin and DefaultContainer). 

Looking at Globals.DefaultSkin, it appears that this object is referenced exactly twice in the DNN core, both in PortalSettings (Components/Portal/PortalSettings.vb, on or about line 733 and 735).  I see no references in the DNN presentation layer.

Both references are essentially the same, using AdminDefaultName and DefaultName respectively.  The latter reads:

Me.ActiveTab.SkinSrc = "[G]" & SkinInfo.RootSkin & DefaultSkin.Folder & DefaultSkin.DefaultName

SkinInfo.RootSkin is defined in Components/Skin/SkinInfo.vb, and is hardcoded to return the value "Skins".  Since the SkinSrc above contains a "[G]" prefix, it is hardcoded as a global skin and will therefore use the global skin directory.

So, the bottom line is that the default skin must be located in the "/Portals/_default/Skins" directory.  Whatever is specified in the folder attribute of dotnetnuke.config will be appended to this value.

I haven't fooled around with FrontPage extensions in some time, but although your FTP utility might be hiding these directories, I would not expect this to effect how .NET treats the directory (I suppose you could check the permissions to verify).

Have you started a thread that relates specifically to the issue you're experiencing?

Brandon