Well, I just want to thank you for your volunteering. It is appreciated. I guess the issue is that to be on the DNN team you have to know alot about DNN. Much more than the average web site administrator or developer. It seems that because you have this knowledge, and I don't mean just you I see it on alot of open source applications, you are more likely to not fully explain or write instructions that are easy to follow for the average admin/developer. Most for profit software applications have authors that write their instructions in easy to follow, nothing taken for granted terms. They would usually cover all the IIS and SQL and .NET 2.0 configurations that have to be changed to make their apps work. This is one of the MAJOR stumbling blocks to Open Source advancement. If people can't get your app working they will go elsewhere.
I do believe you when you, being a DNN developer, say DNN is an easy install. For you it probably only takes 15 minutes. My first install took two painful days and from what I read, that was pretty fast for the first time. My second took 3 hours and I documented each step, so my next should be a breeze. I don't know about PHP nuke or Mambo, but I read of others on here struggling for days with DNN unsuccessfully and able to get the others running in hours or less. I would think if DNN was a for profit adventure, it would be defunct in a short time because you would have to have a call center the size of India to help with all the installation and configuration questions.
The instructions, I believe, should not be all in one document. Each different installation should have its own document and not reference back to other installations for configuration information. I am not sure of the correct or most logical order here, but the installation types, Standard Install Package or Source Code with Visual Studio should be broken out. It should then be split first into the .net 1.0 DNN 3.x and the .net 2.0 DNN 4.x. From there it should be split into maybe standard default installs of IIS 6 Server 2003 and IIS 5 server 2000. Then split by SQL 2000, MSDE, SQL2005, and SQL 2005 Express. Do not worry about network configurations, antivirus, firewall or other security devices, network routing / forwarding, DNS configuration, etc. These are issues that have to be solved on an individual basis and can be figured out through forums. Now the forums are full of people who can't get DNN running on fresh install test boxes.
So basically, to cover the majority of users and help reduce the installer's and your wasted time answering the same questions over and over, I believe covering these configuration options is adequate. Again, do not put everything into one document and then reference back to different version's configurations to complete your version's install. It may make sense to you, but not to the majority of your users who are getting confused.
Finally, if the Open Source in general movement , DNN specifically, had better documentation that was thorough and easier to follow it would grow alot faster. That growth would also be good for your team members who may not necessarily get paid from DNN but make a living or a nice side income off of developing for, supporting, or hosting with DNN. 