ok installing the DNN part for developers has not really been that particularly easy, i have had to go through several rounds of iteration and a lot of googling to ensure that everything is in place so that I get the "CLick here to access your portal" finally. I am not sure if someone has already done this but i am doing this coz i spent hours hunting stuff from this forum and others.

I believe I have seen too many people posting a lot of problems so I am going to ensure that i try to club everything together and post it in one place.

First this applies to Version 4.0.0.2 so i am not sure if these have been rectified in other up coming versions. Also this is assuming that youve gotten SQL Express to work correctly.

Unzip all files from the source directory into where every you wish to in the wwwroot, i have done it at the c:\inetpub\wwwroot which leaves me with two directories
c:\inetpub\wwwroot\library and
c:\inetpub\wwwroot\website and a solution file.

Now after this you should get a huge list of errors and several iteration processes to go through so here is how it went for me.

1. Open the dotnetnuke.sln file and change the "http://locahost/dotnetnuke_2" to "http://locahost/website"
2. Set Permissions for the two folders library and website, right click on each of them and then go to properties, highlight the security tab and then add in ASPNET and NETWORK SERVICE users and then give them full permission, i know some would like to give it just the requisite amount of permissions required but thats for you to decide depending on the amount of risk your system is open to.
3. rename the release.config to web.config
4. Copy the SiteUrls.config from the CONFIG folder into the root which is c:\inetpub\wwwroot\library.
5.Assuming that you have been able to install SQL Express correctly create a database with the name "Database" and make sure when you are creating it you point the path of where it should place the database files (*.mdf) to the c:\inetpub\wwwroot\website\APP_DATA directory. This way you dont have to change too much of the web.config file.
6. Now again add ASPNET login in SQL server management studio, click on the server where this "Database" DB is and go to object explorer and click on "Secutiry" Tree and then "Logins", right click on login and click on new login and add "YOURSYSTEMNAME/ASPNET" or just search and look for ASPNET users. Once added assign "database" as the default DB to ASPNET.

Now you should be more or less ready to hit http://localhost/website and not get any errors,

let it all install everything and you should be ready to go.
Rgds,

Suman (www.dancechic.com)