Hi,

I have a fairly new installation of DNN 5 which has run smoothly for a month.  It is installed in the root of the shared-hosting web server.  I have created a small .ASP.NET app in a subdirectory and setup that directory as a virtual directory.  This arrangement means that the small app's web.config will inherit from DNN's web.config, and I didn't want that (since the small app is not a DNN app), so I added the following tag to DNN's web.config, immediately above <system.web>:

 <location path="." inheritInChildApplications="false">

 Of course, after the </system.web> tag is the </location> tag.  I understand that this prevents the small app in the subdirectory from inheriting that section of web.config.  This is the method that others, at least in DNN 4.x, have used to get a DNN and another app in a subdirectory to co-exist peacefully.

Once this "location" tag was added to DNN's web.config, the small app in the subdirectory began working perfectly.  However, then I was getting a error message on the home page of the DNN web site.  It showed up in the UI as a friendly error at the top of the Content Pane. The error that is occurring is a "page load excpetion", as logged in the Event Viewer.  The details are as follows:

AssemblyVersion: 5.0.1
PortalID: 0
PortalName: My Portal Name
UserID: -1
UserName:
ActiveTabID: 38
ActiveTabName: Home
RawURL: /Home/tabid/38/ctl/Login/Default.aspx?returnurl=%2fHome%2ftabid%2f38%2fDefault.aspx
AbsoluteURL: /Default.aspx
AbsoluteURLReferrer: http://mydomain.com/Home/tabid/38/ctl...
UserAgent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 8.0; Windows NT 5.1; Trident/4.0; .NET CLR 1.1.4322; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR 3.0.4506.2152; .NET CLR 3.5.30729)
DefaultDataProvider: DotNetNuke.Data.SqlDataProvider, DotNetNuke.SqlDataProvider
ExceptionGUID: ace1810f-cfcb-4be8-8b14-7358350cd962
InnerException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object.
FileName:
FileLineNumber: 0
FileColumnNumber: 0
Method: DotNetNuke.Common.Utilities.XmlUtils.GetAttributeValueAsInteger
StackTrace:
Message: DotNetNuke.Services.Exceptions.PageLoadException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object. ---> System.NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object. at DotNetNuke.Common.Utilities.XmlUtils.GetAttributeValueAsInteger(XPathNavigator nav, String AttributeName, Int32 DefaultValue) at DotNetNuke.Common.Utilities.Config.GetPersistentCookieTimeout() at DotNetNuke.Entities.Users.UserController.UserLogin(Int32 portalId, UserInfo user, String PortalName, String IP, Boolean CreatePersistentCookie) at DotNetNuke.Modules.Admin.Authentication.Login.ValidateUser(UserInfo objUser, Boolean ignoreExpiring) at DotNetNuke.Modules.Admin.Authentication.Login.UserAuthenticated(Object sender, UserAuthenticatedEventArgs e) at DotNetNuke.Services.Authentication.AuthenticationLoginBase.OnUserAuthenticated(UserAuthenticatedEventArgs ea) at DotNetNuke.Modules.Admin.Authentication.Login.cmdLogin_Click(Object sender, EventArgs e) at System.Web.UI.WebControls.Button.OnClick(EventArgs e) at System.Web.UI.WebControls.Button.RaisePostBackEvent(String eventArgument) at System.Web.UI.WebControls.Button.System.Web.UI.IPostBackEventHandler.RaisePostBackEvent(String eventArgument) at System.Web.UI.Page.RaisePostBackEvent(IPostBackEventHandler sourceControl, String eventArgument) at System.Web.UI.Page.RaisePostBackEvent(NameValueCollection postData) at System.Web.UI.Page.ProcessRequestMain(Boolean includeStagesBeforeAsyncPoint, Boolean includeStagesAfterAsyncPoint) --- End of inner exception stack trace ---
Source:
Server Name: WEBE8

I've spent many hours researching this, and trying different things, and I have been unable to get both DNN and my small app in the subdirectory to co-exist.  What can I do to make these two get along?  :-)

-Steve

DNN is already installed (and running) in the root. The non-DNN app is installed in a subdirectory which has been configured in IIS as an application on its own.  The issue is that the non-DNN app is inheriting the web.config from DNN, and when I utilize the <location> tag in DNN's web.config (as above), it causes an error in DNN. 

What is the proper method to get a non-DNN app in a subdirectory to work when DNN is in the root?

Thank you

Back to the top, hoping somebody has some input on this issue.  I'm still unable to resolve this issue, but know there's got to be a way to run a separate IIS application in a subfolder under DNN.  Any thoughts?

-Steve