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HomeHomeDevelopment and...Development and...Getting StartedGetting StartedVisual Studio / WAP QuestionVisual Studio / WAP Question
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6/3/2012 6:02 PM
 

I have recently committed to supporting a website that was developed by someone else with DNN.  I'm new to DNN, There was no documentation and I've literally spent 100's of hours figuring out how everything runs. The website is remotely hosted by PowerDNN and through a lot of trial and error I've FINALLY got a development website running locally on my PC. It is DNN v6, SQL 2008R2, and I'm using Visual Studio 2010. I've also recently acquired the development (uncompiled) code so that I can make the necessary changes to the site.

To make this a bit more difficult for me I have limited experience with Visual Studio. I've only used Visual Studio WSP developing my own websites with C#. This website is Visual Basic (which I am ok w/) but it is designed using WAP. I've not created a .dll file in my life!

I have 6 modules that were coded by the person who developed the site. I need to make changes to those modules, so I am trying to figure out how to use the solution files for them to make the changes. This may be more of a Visual Studio/.Net programming issue but I'm hoping that it is a VERY easy question for someone here to answer. This is all just over my head, although looking at the code, I can see that the developer was not a very competent programmer. I need to make those programming changes, but unfortunately I am not a competent Visual Studio user! :-( Maybe if you combined us we'd be perfect (or perfectly incompetent).

I really need help from one of you experienced people who can show some pity on me (yes . . . I am begging or kissing up depending on whichever works for you).

I've got the website directory that is hosted by my local IIS, and I've got the directory that is holding all of the uncompiled code in my documents. Could someone please tell me how can I open/modify/copy the uncompiled code with the website?

 
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6/6/2012 10:59 PM
 

Welcome to programming in the real world!  Projects involving Inherited code that are poorly documented is not as uncommon as you'd think.  Spending 100's of hours already and not being able to build and deploy modules seems a little backwards.  I would have tried to build and deploy what you had before trying to understand it right away.  But I digress...

I'm new to DNN myself, but I think you can build modules using different templates aside from Chris's.  So, if you open a csproj file in Notepad what do you have for the ProjectTypeGuids tag?  Here is the value of Chris's project template:

<ProjectTypeGuids>{349c5851-65df-11da-9384-00065b846f21};{FAE04EC0-301F-11D3-BF4B-00C04F79EFBC}</ProjectTypeGuids> 

If you have the same ProjectTypeGuid you can just download his latest Visual Studio Project Template from CodePlex and you should be able to build the solution no problem.  If you're able to build the solution already, but just not sure how to deploy the dll, then I will refer you to Chris Hammond's Video series on Module Development.  He walks you through the steps on how to build modules using his project template and then install them on a DNN site.  And if you have a different ProjectTypeGuids, and cannot build the solution you need to find what VS Project Template was used first.

Best of luck!

 

 
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6/22/2012 2:22 PM
 

Thanks for your answer. I agree that maybe I went about this backwards . . . part of that was due to the client needing me to make changes immediately. After lots of VERY frustrating hours spent on this we decided to just develop a brand new site with DNN v6. PowerDNN hosts the site and one of the technicians was working with me on some of the strange problems I was having. He agreed with me that the site was compromised so much that it would save time to just start over. Finally my client agreed -- I just needed someone who was experienced with DNN to tell her that before she would agree to it.

So, I am now working on a brand new DNN site -- still a newbie -- and still struggling. The biggest problem I've had is designing a custom CSS based skin. I did come up with one that finally works :-) Yeah! However, I'm having problems with the menuing. I posted to the skin forum and hopefully will be able to get that problem resolved.

I am sorry for not replying to your post sooner. I didn't get any notification of it and just happened to see it. Thanks for taking pity on me and trying to help :-) Have a great day!

 
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