Good morning DotNetNuke community,

I am a .NET developer new to DotNetNuke.  I heard many great things about this CMS software and wanted to give it a try and start using it.  I downloaded the latest community version of DotNetNuke, "DotNetNuke_Community_07.00.04_Source.zip", and unzipped it to a temporary folder.

The folder contains:

4 folders
- Build
- Community
- packages
- website

2 solution files
- DotNetNuke_Community_Source.sln
- DotNetNuke_Community_UnitTests_Source.sln

I opened the "DotNetNuke_Community_Source.sln" solution file and it looks like the solution contains a bunch of class library projects.  I compiled the solution and the compiled project dlls were outputed to a dynamically created "bin" folder under the "website" folder.  

Question 1:
Where is the setup located where it tells the solution to output the compiled project dlls to a bin folder under the website folder?  

Question 2:
Can I assume that the "DotNetNuke_Community_Source.sln" project is only for class library development, is that correct?

Question 3:
Can I assume that any web development work that does not involve creating class library projects, are done under the "website" folder, is that correct?  If yes, then I assume I should be using Visual Studio to open the contents under the "website" folder as a Visual Studio "Web Application" project, is that correct?

Thank you very much for your help DotNetNuke community.  Look forward to using DotNetNuke.

1. Source includes msbuild scripts to handle the build process.



2. The Source.snl is for rebuilding the dotnetnuke system from source. There is really no need to ever bother with it for day to day development - since altering the actual dnn core libraries will break forward compatibility with the core. Its really more provided for consistency and as part of the whole open source thing.


Your best bet is to first install dnn on a machine and get it running using the install.zip version.



3. Again you should take some time to understand how DNN works - any dnn development that you will be doing in most cases will be limited to the development of addon modules, skins, skinobjects or providers.



4. If you are just looking at creating a website from dnn then you dont even need any development tools - there are a wealth of modules already out there that meet the needs of 90% of all sites.



When developing modules - you can use either a WSP or WAP model.



Westa

Good morning Wes Tatters,

Thank you very much for your time in answering my questions.  very much appreciate it.  I know I had a lot of questions and your answers helped to clarify a lot of stuff.  so on that note, I have another question.

1.  Based on the answers, can I assume that when creating new modules as class library dll projects, it should not be created in and added to the "DotNetNuke_Community_Source.sln" solution but to the web application project (the contents under the "website" folder)?

thank you.