DotNetNuke® Websites: Problem — Design — Solution

2.2. Problem

In order to develop the mbrdesigncorp.com website, DotNetNuke must first be installed on the computer that will host the website.

If this is your first DotNetNuke website, or you are simply installing DotNetNuke to follow along with the examples, I highly recommend that you install DotNetNuke on your local computer.

Most users think of a website in the traditional sense — as having several independent static web pages stored as HTML or HTM files. Later versions of web servers allowed people to use file extensions such as ASP, CFM, or PSP to add dynamic content to each of these pages, each using different scripting technologies. The dynamic parts of these pages were often stored in a database. Using ASP.NET, DotNetNuke takes this one step further. This is a little bit of an over simplification, but think of it this way: DotNetNuke has one web page where all content is loaded from the database. The "page" is assembled on-the-fly with the content being determined by the request from the browser. Not only is the content stored in a database, but so is the menu structure and page layout for every page on the site. This is what gives DotNetNuke the ability to add a new page on-the-fly. There are no pages to upload, and therefore no additional work is required to make a page look like the rest of the site. The DotNetNuke application framework handles all of this and more. ...