Hello everyone,
I'm a little out of practice and I could really use some help! ...I was a big fan of DNN 4.07 (built on server 2003, SQL 2005) and I had built a few servers back when you guys were still at that distro.
Its been a few years now and I have decided to try building a new DNN server (Server 2008, SQL Express, DNN 7.03) but no matter what, I have not been able to install it. After ALOT of trouble shooting, I have gotten to the point now where DNN will load if I type localhost in I.E on the server itself. However, the issue is; If I try to access the website from another computer just using the servers IP address (xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx/dnn) the website starts to load and then gives me this error message "DNN ERROR Connection to the database failed".
I'm a little confused because it works server side, so I think its probably something little I'm missing... however, I'm going to paste my notes from the installation below so you guys can see how I installed it and maybe you can give me some pointers?
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Installation Notes
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Being new to Server 2008, I decided to go on to youtube and find a tutorial. I found the official DNN video (DNN 7.0 Installation Part 1 - File System Configuration). The issue was, they have you create a folder called "websites" outside of the wwwroot folder. I tried it that way and was not able to get IIS to re-route to the DNN website, so I created a folder called "DNN" in the "C:\inetpub\wwwroot" folder. which seemed to solved that issue.
The second video or step (DNN 7.0 Installation Part 2 - WebServer Configuration), I couldn't start until I added the "Web Server (IIS)" role to server 2008, which was missing from the steps in the video. But again, no big deal, it also gave me the chance to install the .net framework 3.5 so that I could install SQL Express later on. I went on to following the video to create the user "iis apppool\dnn" and configured modify permissions to the DNN folder.
The third video or step (DNN 7.0 Installation Part 3 - Database configuration) was very straight forward. Although when connecting to SQL Express I had some trouble because I was use to just type "." in the connection string and was good to go. What through me was I needed to type ".\SQLEXPRESS" instead. Once I figured that out I was able to proceed although, thinking about it now, I wonder if the .\sqlexpress maybe the issue? instead of "localhost\SQLEXPRESS"...
The forth and final video or step (DNN 7.0 Installation Part 4 - Installation Wizard) is where I had the most trouble! In video #2 they miss a very important step... in IIS manager under the "default web site" there was one very important step I missed. That was to add a virtual directory, which later I found out had to be converted to an application.
From there, server 2008 would not open ASPX files. I found the following cmd line to resolve that issue:
cd\
cd c:\windows\microsoft.net\framework\v4.0.30319
aspnet_regiis.exe -i
which resolved it instantly! I was able to complete the installation wizard without any issues and now DNN loads as localhost and I have added alias for the outside connection but if I try and access it from another computer example: 192.168.100.103/dnn ..I just get the following error message: DNN ERROR Connection To The Database Failed
can anyone please help me?!