Thanks Bert, that makes more sense now. I am using Visual Studio Team Edition for Software Developers and I have no trouble performing the job that I need to do.  I just find it difficult to understand how Microsoft would break WAP, then issue an add-on, when they are usually on the ball when it comes to this kind of technology. Is it safe to say that this is more of an Express version issue? Or something else?

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Dwayne J. Baldwin

I would like to clarify a few points in this discussion.

The core team have focuesed on the Website project approach for the core for a few reasons.

1. Back in the Beta Days of .NET 2 that is all we had, it took three months of work and several days of meetings at Redmond, in order to get DotNetNuke running on .NET 2.  Interestingly, we were told by a senior Product Manager in the ASP.NET 2 team that it was as a result of one of those meetings in Redmond that the decision was made to develop the WAP as an option.  However by then we were fully committed to the WSP model.

2. We feel that we have to support the WSP model due to the fact that it is supported in Visual Web Developer (VWD).

3. Its is NOT possible to support both models (for the core project) using the same codebase due to a number of incompatabilities between the models, which have documented in shaun's blogs.  It might be possible to automate a conversion path from WSP -> WAP for the core, but this is not really the issue in this discussion.

4. We have focused our efforts to enable module development using Visual Web Developer.  As VWD does not support any other project type period, this means developing modules as dynamic modules.

5. We have NOT however ruled out modules being built using other paradigms, and providing support for those approaches.  Its a matter of time and $$.

So in summary, I welcome the work being done by Bert and others in developing an approach that satsifies the needs of many in our community for a VS2003 like development paradigm.

We have created as part of the 4.3 release a Module Upgrade Wizard to allow people to convert their modules to the dynamic module (WSP) development approach.  We would like to add more tools for the .NET 2 Module Developer.  The advantages of VS2005 and .NET2 (MSBuild, Web Deployment Projects, Wap Application Projects, Project and Item Templates, BuildManager) is really that we have a lot more options to play with.

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Charles Nurse Chief Architect Evoq Content Team Lead, DNN Corp. Want to contribute to the Platform project? - See here

MVP (ASP.NET) and ASPInsiders Member

The other thread is discussing WAP vs WSP for modules (not core).

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Charles Nurse Chief Architect Evoq Content Team Lead, DNN Corp. Want to contribute to the Platform project? - See here

MVP (ASP.NET) and ASPInsiders Member