I'm new to these forums, and was also new to DNN and GoDaddy.com. But since I work in IT and I'm impatient, I spent hours and eventually figured this all out and since everyone has been friendly and helpful, I'd like give back by writing a quick guide on how to get DNN working on GoDaddy the manual way. This guide is intended for the ABSOLUTE beginner, so I try to keep this as simple as possible.

note: Most of where I got my ideas was from this thread.

First off, you need a GoDaddy hosting account. You need at least the "Deluxe Plan" because DNN requires a MS SQL 2000 database, and that is not an option on the "Economy Plan"

Step 1: Get your virtual directory setup

o                                Login to your GoDaddy.com account

o                                From the top menu, click My Account

o                                On the icon that says "Hosting & Email", click "Web Hosting & Databases"

o                                You should see a list of your hosted sites, for the site in question, click "Settings"

o                                On the right, click "Custom Directory Permissions"

o                                In the box, pick a name, this will be the location of your DNN site (eg www.mysite/portal, portal being the name you put in the box now). Click EACH checkbox. Write down the folder name you use here (eg "portal"), we'll need this later.

o                                Save your settings

o                                Now lets go back to the page where it lists your sites (look at step 3 above)

o                                Click "Databases"

o                                Under "Create New Database", Create a MS SQL database. For username/password I suggest using the same as your GoDaddy login, or just write it down, we'll need this later.

o                                Its going to take a while for the new folder to process and be setup, same with the database.

o                                The last part here is that after the database has been created and setup, we need both the server and database name. Going back to where your sites are (again look at step 3), click on Databases, and you should see a new record showing your new database. From here we need the server name, this should be the leftmost column and should look something like: whsql-v02.prod.mesa1.secureserver.net (write this down).

o                                On this same line, under DB Name, is the database name, should look something like: DB_10421 (write this down)

Step 2: Get DNN & Config

o                                First off, goto http://www.dotnetnuke.com/ and register for an account (takes 1 min), then login

o                                Now you have access to the download site.

o                                Get the Source Distribution (for this example I got version 3.0.13), and download it to your computer.

o                                Unzip the file to some folder.

o                                Before we upload, lets modify the web.config file, this should be in your new unzipped folder, or if you have version 3.1.0, then locate a file named release.config and copy this file and rename it as web.config.

o                                There is only one line you need to modify, its about the 22nd line and looks like this:  <add key="SiteSqlServer" value="Server=(local);Database=DotNetNuke;uid=;pwd=;" />

o                                For Server, replace "(local)", with the database server name that you wrote in the above steps.

o                                For Database, replace DotNetNuke with the database name that you wrote in the above steps

o                                For uid & pwd, this is the username and password that you used to create your database, write them here.

o                                Your new line should look something like this: <add key="SiteSqlServer" value="Server=whsql-v02.prod.mesa1.secureserver.net;Database=DB_10421;uid=thekubrix;pwd=mypass;" />

o                                OPTIONAL (yet recommended): On the 55th line you'll see:  <customErrors mode="RemoteOnly" />. If you want to get useful errors, you need to change this parameter to "Off", like this: <customErrors mode="Off" />

o                                Save this file.

Step 3: Upload DNN to your site

o                                Now FTP to your site (don't have a client? try CuteFtp, or search google for a client), your FTP server name/ip is the same as your site, and your login is the same as your GoDaddy login.

o                                Locate the virtual folder you created from the first steps above. Copy all the files from your recent download into here.

Step 4: Install

o                                Just go to your virtual directory, and the install will start itself, so for example: http://www.mysite.com/portal

o                                The setup will begin to run and display its progress and any error messages

Thats it! Its recommend that you immediately change the password for both the Host and Admin accounts.