Manually Installing DotNetNuke on GoDaddy

These steps detail the process of manually installing DotNetNuke to the root of an empty GoDaddy hosted domain.

1. Acquire DotNetNuke
   
   
   
   • Go to http://www.dotnetnuke.com/ and login (note: if you're not registered, then you'll have to register before you can login)
   
   
   • Click the "DOWNLOAD" icon at the top of the page
   
   
   • Download the edition of your choice (I chose Community)
   
   
   • Unzip the file to the directory of your choice
   
   
   
   


2. Virtual directory setup
   
   
   
   • Login to GoDaddy
   
   
   • Hover over "Hosting" on the menu bar and click the "My Hosting Account" link
   
   
   • Click "Manage Account" next to the site to which you want to install DNN. This will take you to GoDaddy's Hosting Control Center.
   
   
   • Hover over the "Content" tab and click the "File Manager" link
   
   
   • Select the "[Root]" row by clicking on it or checking the checkbox
   
   
   • Click the "Permissions" icon on the toolbar
   
   
   • Check the "Read", "Write", and "Reset all children to inherit" and click OK (this needs to occur because DotNetNuke writes to its directory and sub-directories for many reasons, the most common is module installation)
   
   
   
   


3. Database setup
   
   
   
   • In GoDaddy's Hosting Control Center, hover over the "Databases" tab and click the "SQL Server" link
   
   
   • Click the "Create Database" button
   
   
   • In the description type something descriptive like "www.mydomain.com DotNetNuke Database"
   
   
   • Check the DSN and ASP Schema checkboxes (this tells GoDaddy's database creation script to create a Data Source Name for the database and to Create the tables for the ASP Schema - e.g. aspnet_Applications, aspnet_Roles, etc.)
   
   
   • (Optional) If you want remote admin access to the database, check the "Yes" radio button under "Allow Direct Database Access" (this allows external access to the database - e.g. you can connect to it using SQL Server Management Studio on your own PC)
   
   
   • Enter a name for the database in the "SQL Server Database/User Name" field - e.g. mydomaindnn (this will be the name of the database and the user name for used for DNN's access)
   
   
   • Pick a good password, but be mindful of GoDaddy's password requirements. Write down this password as you'll need it to edit the web.config in a future step.
   
   
   • (Optional) If you'd like to create an user with read-only access this database, fill out the remaining fields correlating to "Read-Only User"
   
   
   • Click OK (You'll be taken back to teh SQL Server databases page and the status of your database will be "Pending Setup" - this should only be the case for a few minutes)
   
   
   • Click the "Edit/View Details" icon for your database in the "Actions" column. This page contains the values you'll need for changing the web.config in the next step.
   
   
   
   


4. Web.Config
   
   
   
   • On your PC, go to the directory where you unzipped the DNN installation files.
   
   
   • Rename web.config to original-web.config
   
   
   • Rename release.config to web.config
   
   
   • Open web.config in your favorite editor
   
   
   • In the conectionStrings section, fully comment out the SQLExpress connection string (it contains "Data Source=.\SQLExpress"), and uncomment the SQL Server connection string (it contains "Server=(local)"). Change the SQL Server connection string include the database values seen on GoDaddy (Server is Host Name; Database is Database Name; uid is User Name and pwd is the password you entered for this user when you set up the datbase).
   
   
   • Repeat the above step for the connections strings found in the appSettings section just a few lines below.
   
   
   
   


5. Upload via FTP
   
   
   
   • Configure your FTP clint (FileZilla, or CuteFtp, or the like) to point to ftp.mydomain.com, with your GoDaddy username/passoword (or another FTP user for whom you've register FTP credentials through the GoDaddy Control Center).
   
   
   • Connect
   
   
   • Once connected, you can delete everything in the root except the _db_backups and _hcc_thumbs directories.
   
   
   • This upload the contents of the directory to which you unzipped the DNN installation files.
   
   
   
   


6. You are ready to install
   
   
   
   • Navigate to the www.mydomain.com
   
   
   • Follow the steps to walk through creating your site (Note: choosing the Auto option is recommended.)
   
   
   • For SMTP settings, use
     
     server: relay-hosting.secureserver.net
     
     basic
     
     username: emailuser@mydomain.com
     
     password: [emailuser's email password]
     
     * Make sure to Test the settings before you move on!