I am a new user to DotNetNuke and find it wonderful. My first site is going to be a type of social networking site. I come from a dreamweaver and access background and all sites cutom designed. I have a few questions I hope you can answer.

1. Can you edit the DNN SQL database yourself to add your custom tables and fields
2. Can you edit your pages to pull data from these tables and dnn created tables
3. What happens when I upgrade DNN in the future, will it affect the above
4. The way I see my site is that registered users will create child portals (is this possible) which will contain their own website. The will choose from a list of predefined skins (which I will create) and start to edit their site. I will have predefined their modules within the skin (is this possible). Their site will have their own menus but I will have a menu across the top (linked to the main site - is this possible). When logged in and browsing through the main site they will have a link to their own site (so they dont have to keep searching for it - possible?). I will have advertising which will be displayed on all portals. Am I going about this the right way or whould I just have a profile module like bebo.com or myspace??? (I don't want to have the registered users to have to purchase a domain name just use a subdomain of my domain i.e. childportalname.mydomain.com)
5. When I update a skin and add more features (modules) I want it to reflect on all child portals.
6. I want a directory listing of child portals by categories i.e. county > town
7. I want to be able to have a seperate business directory on the site (which I will charge users for listings via paypal

I know this is a lot of questions but I would really appreciate your guidance on the above

TIA

For your item number 4 you might have a look at the various user profile/social networking packages available as they might be a better fit than trying to customize the core to support that type of child potal configuration.  Smart-thinker.com is one of the more common social networking module providers.

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-Mitchel Sellers
Microsoft MVP, ASPInsider, DNN MVP
CEO/Director of Development - IowaComputerGurus Inc.


Visit mitchelsellers.com for my mostly DNN Blog and support forum.

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