This site amongst others have some good guides to developing dnn modules.

http://adefwebserver.com/dotNetNukeHELP/

westa

The reason for posting the adef web site link - is that that the listings there explain in pretty good detail the methodology behind building a DNN module.

They provide a fundamental level of understand of what is required to create a module, integrate said module with the dnn api, and then install that module into the dnn ecosystem.

If you do NOT understand why you need the framework running on your machine, then it is obvious that you have not read thru and followed the guides on the adef website - since if you had, you would already have a much better understanding of how dnn works - and WHY you need the framework.

But for starters - to give you a leg up -  EVERY module that is capable of being integrated into DNN must be coded as an ascx class inherited from dotnetnuke.Entities.Modules.PortalModuleBase or a child of that class.

This class provides all the minimum functionality to allow your code to interact with and participate in the DNN lifecycle.  It exposes access to core api functionality such as portalsettings and the entities system, and provides the base structure for the Iportable, Isearchable and Iactionable implementations amongst a host of other things.

DNN is a content platform and as such if you want to code for that content platform you have to follow its guidelines ... you CANT just 'zip' up a chunk of code and think that DNN will work out the rest - it just dont work like that ... 

So if you DO want to understand how DNN works - follow the guides and make a couple of modules based on the steps in the adef website or other places that you may find dnn module guides -- they will all say the same thing --- for starters to make a dnn module - you must install the framework.

Westa