I downloaded the new 6.0 Install zip and decided I would install the product to look it over. I set up the database and connection credentials, provided IIS 5.1 (XP) the virtual folder and security settings required, and extracted the Zip.

After adjusting the connection string, I started the site, and was presented with the normal installation screen asking me how I wanted the product installed. I decided I would repeat the installation several times using each of the options to see what had changed in the installation procedure.

The first time I selected the Legacy Auto-Install option, which just builds a site using the DotNetNuke.Install.Config file from the Install folder for it's options. All appeared to go well until it was time to display the home page. It took over 15 minutes for the home page to appear, and all of the graphic links associated with the titles in the containers were missing. When I looked at the source for the pages, the graphics links had a double forward slash in the path of the image file. This apparently is a problem with the code behind in one of the libraries that is concatenating the folder path of the site to the folder path of the image directory.

Once the site was up, it acts as though it is trying to cache the entire SnowCovered site because it takes forever to produce the ability to see pages and navigate between them. Once up though, it responded as expected.

Next I removed and re-added the database, removed the date key in the web.config file and started the site again. This time I used the Custom option on the installation page. Navigating through the various pages presented to help set up the site was straight forward and not a lot has changed there, except for a few enhancements (outside of this blog's intention). Once the site was up, the same behavior was noted as above. Very sluggish at first, and some of the graphics are missing.

Then I started over, and selected the BLANK SITE option, which is what I would normally use if I were installing for a customer. This installation seemed to function more smoothly, but that may be caused by skipping some of the steps in the other installation paths. When the site displayed, it appeared as though everything was functional, until I started adding items to the pages that used the containers, and the embedded link issue was still present.

I believe that you will see a quick patch to the framework in the very near future, as this does not appear to be ready for prime time yet. Unfortunately, DotNetNuke has earned a reputation that you don't want to jump to a new version, you want to wait until at least a couple of revisions and patches are applied. It would be nice if this moniker could be removed, but it doesn't appear that 6.0 will be the candidate to accomplish that!