DotNetNuke recently announced the much anticipated release of v4.5. Besides being a very stable release, the version also includes many new bells and whistles for your portal. In this article we will cover the installation wizard and specifically the steps within the 'custom' wizard screens.
As you will see the wizard is great for testing your database connection and setting up your connection information, verifying your sites folders permissions are setup correctly BEFORE the installation, and even better the ability to choose which template and out of the box modules you would like setup for the installation from a friendly interface. Joe Brinkman from DotNetNuke has posted full details of the new wizard including a video demonstration here.
Figure 1: Initial installation wizard step.
Figure 2: Test File Permissions. This feature is very useful. More often then not you get your site running smoothly and then determine months down the road while adding new images or installing a new module that your permissions are not setup for all of the appropriate folders. This step will test your folder security to make sure its setup correctly first.
Figure 3: Database Connection Settings. Now you can configure your database connection directly from within the wizard. After configuring your database connection make sure to test it. Additionally setup an object qualifier which will store all tables and database objects within the DNN installation with a prefix (i.e. DNN_Portals instead of Portals) if you setup and object qualifier.
Figure 4: Database Installation Scripts.
Figure 5: Database Installation Scripts.
Note: Be sure to log any errors that occur during the installation process.
Figure 6: Configure Host User. The Host or 'Super User' will have premium security rights to ALL portals within your DNN installation. Its critical that you setup your portal's host users information. You might consider not using the username 'Host' and maybe choose a username that isn't so common.
Figure 7: Install Optional Modules. Now you can choose which core modules you would like to install for your DotNetNuke portal. Keep in mind that if you don't think you are going to use a particular module you should not install it at this time. You can always install it later by navigating to Host, Module Definitions, and there just by installing the module you risk additional performance benefits by not installing it.
Note: You can copy other module installation files to the install folder under DotNetNuke\Install\Module for the option to install the modules from this wizard.
Figure 8: Install Host Portal.
Note: The difference between the host user you specified and the admin user is that the admin user will only have rights to the initial portal setup. Later on the host user can setup other portals and specific configurations within the system that the admin user cannot.
Figure 9: Install Optional Skins & Containers: You can copy other skins and containers to the install folder under DotNetNuke\Install\Skin and DotNetNuke\Install\Container for the option to install the skins and containers from this wizard.
Figure 10: Install Language Packs: You can copy other language packs to the install folder under DotNetNuke\Install\Language. DotNetNuke.com keeps a growing list of language packs available for the framework.
Figure 11: Congrats - Your portal is now setup!
