Hi all,

I was assigned a project to upgrade my company's web-based advertising-creation program ("AdMan") from VB 2003 to 2008. It uses DNN; I don't know what version, but the dates on the dll's are in June of 2004. After looking through the folders and code and trying to upgrade for a couple of days, I have some basic questions just to get me pointed in the right direction, and would appreciate any help that anybody can give.

I copied the "AdMan" folder from our network to my PC's C drive. The AdMan subfolders & files and the DNN folders & files are all mixed together in this AdMan folder (!). (There's also a subfolder called DotNetNuke, but this just seems to be a copy of all DNN stuff in the main folder except "CDI.Show.DataProvider".)

1) Is there any real reason to have your home-grown project and DNN all in one folder?

2) Is it even necessary to have the DNN source if you're going to use it "out of the box", or shouldn't we just be able to put the dll in /bin and add a reference to it?

3) OK, here's a longer and multi-part question. Intro: The AdMan folder contains AdMan.sln like you'd expect, and also DotNetNuke.sln since the DNN code is in the same folder. When I open these solutions, they have some projects in common (probably because AdMan wants to use some DNN functionality), in particular "http://localhost/XXXAdMan/DotNetNuke.vbproj" (where "XXX" is the company's initials). When I converted the DNN solution from 2003 to 2008, I got warnings for several projects:  MSB2012: Project-to-project references to web projects are no longer supported and therefore cannot be converted. Please remove the reference to project http://localhost/XXXAdMan/DotNetNuke.vbproj and add it again.

What does it even mean to have a project in localhost? I did see on one forum posting here that DNN will not be a "web application project" but instead a VS "web site", but... well, I'm not sure what to ask.

I thought I'd try doing what the warning message said. For the first project listed, I right-clicked, selected Project Dependencies, and got a list of checkboxes for things that the project "Depends on:" I tried to unclick the one indicated, but got a message "This dependency was added by the project system and cannot be removed".

So in Solution Explorer, under the project's "My Project" node, I clicked on the "References" tab on the left, and by the reference "DotNetNuke", the path is "The system cannot find the reference specified".

And when I convert the other (AdMan) solution, its "Imports DotNetNuke" lines fail, and I get hundreds of errors about references to DNN classes not being found.

So... could someone give an explanation of what this localhost thing is all about, how I'd get DNN installed into localhost/XXXAdMan, how I'd re-add a reference to that if I *can* get it deleted, or even if I'm on the right track at all?

Thanks very much in advance!