I have today cleared my install and databases and re-installed DNN 3 times.

It looks like it does everything I want but without fail after it working for the longest time and me getting used to the tools, all of a sudden everything dies itself and I just get a DNN error with less than helpful error handling. Urgh.

Not to mention that the documentation for DNN 8 is sketchy at best. Even doing something as simple as getting an existing skin to work isn't covered because of the rename to Themes. None of the existing tutorials seem to be relevant anymore. Anyone producing tutorials that seem appropriate are charging. It's getting quite painful.

I guess I could just run DNN 7 and work from behind there but I would rather not.

Please tell me this isn't just me!

i'm having the same issue as far as trying to learn dnn 8 with tutorials being outdated and just trying to do simple things such as apply a theme. Any advice from existing dnn developers would be greatly appreciated.

If some modules are giving error or skin exceptions coming, probably you can check in event viewer. Mostly we get to know what is cause of error from there. But if site went down and you are not able to login to dnn site, then need to know what exactly error is coming. You can enable custom error mode in web.config file from "RemoteOnly" to "Off" to see error trace.