Christoc.com Guestbook Module

Congrats! You've just created a DotNetNuke Module. This module has some specific functionality implemented using the new DAL2 (data access layer) in DotNetNuke 7.0. With that, you will find that it has a sample SQL table in the providers/dataproviders/sqldataprovider/00.00.01.sqldataprovider folder, this will be executed when the module is installed usign the instructions below. This project provides the ability to create Items, and display a list of those items. You can also Edit and Delete items after they have been created. You will likely want to expand upon the properties the Items have, in order to do so you will need to modify the database table and the Item.cs file in the Components folder.

* Important *

When creating a project using this template, you should have named your project simply "ModuleName", not "Christoc.comModuleName". If you didn't do this, the easiest thing to do is close the solution, delete the folder from your DesktopModules folder, then create a new project.

Due to limitations in the templating capabilities of Visual Studio, you will need to make some minor changes, and double check a few things, before you package this module.

  1. BEFORE checking the module into your source control environment check the following.
  2. Edit the Project properties by double-clicking on the Properties folder in Solution Explorer
  3. On the Web tab:
    1. Under 'Start Action', make sure to set your Start URL to the correct site (ex: http://dnndev.me/).
    2. Under 'Servers', make sure to "Use IIS Web Server" with a project url of http://dnndev.me/desktopmodules/Guestbook and an Override application root URL of http://dnndev.me/

DotNetNuke Task Manager Module Development Series

Steps after your project is setup.

  1. To Build and Package your Module you need to change to Release mode and then simply choose Build from the Build menu. The MSBuild scripts will do the packaging process for you. The packaging process creates an INSTALL and a SOURCE package in the INSTALL folder within your desktopmodule/modulename folder.
  2. Installing your module in your development DotNetNuke instance is easy.Take the SOURCE ZIP file that is created in the INSTALL folder, upload that using the Host/Extensions page, Installation Wizard.
  3. After you've done a release for your module (typically deploying to an environment outside of your development environment) you should change the Version number, you need to do this in two places, the assemblyinfo file, and the .DNN manifest file. Next time you build the module in release mode you will get a new package (using the version number) created.
  4. For more information visit our DotNetNuke Training page.

After you are finished reading this Documentation you can delete the Documentation directory from your project.