In previous posts I described how WebMatrix can be used to download DotNetNuke and install it on your local computer and how you can use WebMatrix to publish your DotNetNuke site to a Hosting Provider.

Some of you have probably already been asking the question – “Does this ability to publish allow me to update my remote site from my local version?”, and the answer is a qualified yes.

Lets first modify the local site. 

I have modified the content on the home page to show an image.  I won’t show all the steps to do this as most of you know how to do this, but Figure 1 shows the resulting updated Home page.

Figure 1 – The Updated Version of the Home Page on the Local Site

Now that my local site has been updated I select Publish from the WebMatrix toolbar (Figure 2) – in exactly the same way as I did to initially Publish the site.

Figure 2 – Publishing the updated Local Site

We are now presented with the same Publish Preview screen (Figure 3), although the list of files is much smaller.  In this case I have a new File in the Portal Home Folder – the image I uploaded and added to the Front Page), and two Module Caching files.  By default all the files which are different are selected , but in this case we don’t need to Publish the caching files (although it doesn’t actually hurt).

Figure 3 – Updating the Remote Site

Clicking Continue will deploy all the modified files and update the database.

That’s it – your changes have been re-published, and the live version will reflect the changes you made – so why was my answer a “qualified” yes.  The reason for this is the comment in yellow in Figure 3 – “Publishing will overwrite any remote databases” – i.e. your remote database is dropped and the data replaced by the data on your local database.

This is fine if all changes are made from your local site, but if you have any updates on the remote site (new users, forum posts, comments etc.) these will be lost when you re-publish.

If Microsoft ever offer the ability to do differential updates to the database then my answer would be much less qualified. Having said that, if your site is a simple content only site you may be able to use this approach to maintain your site.

In a previous post I described how WebMatrix can be used to download DotNetNuke and install it on your local computer.  In this blog I will describe how you can use WebMatrix to publish your DotNetNuke site to a Hosting Provider.

First lets slightly modify the content from a plain vanilla DotNetNuke site, by deleting the modules on the front page and adding a single HTML module with some “Lorem Ipsum” text. (Figure 1)

Figure 1 - The Modified DotNetNuke site

We have to make one additional modification before we can publish our site – we need to add a Portal Alias for the site.  In order to publish a site using WebMatrix you will need a hosting provider that supports the latest version of MSDeploy. 

The WebMatrix application includes a list of hosting companies that offer this support, including a number of hosting companies that are offering “free” hosting for the duration of the WebMatrix Beta. I chose Applied Innovations free Beta Hosting Package (Figure 2).

Figure 2  - List of Web Hosters that support Publishing from WebMatrix

Once you have a hosting provider they will provide you with a url for the site.  This needs to be added to the list of Portal Aliases (found under Admin –> Site Settings) before you publish your site. (Figure 3)

Figure 3 – List of Portal Aliases

So we are now set up and ready to publish our DotNetNuke site.  To publish a website using WebMatrix select the Publish button in the Ribbon Bar and select the Configure option. (Figure 4)

Figure 4 – Publish your site from WebMatrix

You will then be presented with a dialog to enter the Publishing Settings.  These will have been given to you by your hosting company. (Figure 5)

Figure 5 – Website Publishing Settings

Once you have entered your settings you will need to click Publish to start the process of publishing your site.  The first step is that WebMatrix will build a list of files that are different between the two sites (local and remote).  For my example there are 2331 files and 1 database (Figure 6).

Figure 6 – A Preview of the files that will be published to your site.

Note that you can publish all or just some of your files in one session.  Obviously, unless all of the files are eventually published the site will not be fully functional.  Once you click Continue the dialog will close and WebMatrix will start to deploy your site – updating the status bar as each file is published. (Figures 7 and 8)

Figure 7 – WebMatrix shows the publishing status in its Status Bar.

Figure 8 – WebMAtrix shows a Publish Complete message when the site is Published

Once the site is completely published you can click in the link in the status bar to browse to the newly deployed site. (Figure 9)

Figure 9 – The Published DotNetNuke site

That’s it – we have now seen how WebMatrix can be used to install DotNetNuke on your local machine by downloading it from the Web Gallery, and how you can then use WebMatrix to publish the resulting site to a remote Hosting provider.  In future blogs I will dive deeper into the other components of WebMatrix.

Earlier this week Microsoft released WebMatrix the new free lightweight web-stack for developing ASP.NET Web Applications.  As I discussed in my initial blog one of the potential uses of WebMatrix is its ability to open existing Open Source applications directly from the Web Application Gallery. 

In this blog post I will walk through the steps required to use WebMatrix to download and install DNN on your local machine.  In a future blog post I will show how you can then publish your site to the web, using Web Matrix’s publish option.

Once you have downloaded and installed WebMatrix from - http://www.microsoft.com/web/webmatrix/download/ you will be able to launch it from your Windows Start menu. 

On startup you are presented with the following screen (Figure 1)

Figure 1 – The WebMatrix Startup Screen

As we are intending to create a DNN site we will select “Site From Web Gallery”  Clicking this link will bring up the dialog shown in Figure 2

Figure 2 – Selecting an Application from the Web Gallery

As you can see DotNetNuke is the default selection – this is because it is the application with the highest number of downloads.  We will keep this default and select “Next”.  We are then presented with the EULA (End-User License Agreement) (Figure 3) which you will need to accept by clciking the “I Accept” button.

Figure 3 – Accept EULA

Once you accept the EULA WebMAtrix will begin downloading DNN from the Web Gallery (Figure 4)

Figure 4 – Downloading DNN

Once DNN has been downloaded from the Web Gallery, you will be able to click the “Next” button, where you will be presented with the configuration screen.  This is where you enter parameters that will allow WebMatrix to create your database for you.  In this case I enter the following parameters (Figure 5).

Figure 5 – DNN Configuration

• Database Server – (local) – for my default instance of SQL Server 2005/2008 – I could also enter the machine name of the computer
• Database Name – DNN_WebMatrix - the name I am going to use for the database
• Database User Name – the name of a user to create in SQL Server that will be used to connect to the database
• Database Password – the password for the user
• Confirm – confirm the password for the user
• Database Administrator – the username for the Database Administrator (for most default installs of SQL Server this will be sa)
• Database Administrator Password – the password that was used for the Administrator when SQL Serve was installed

Once you have entered the information – click “Next” to allow WebMatrix to create the Database for you.  In addition to creating the database WebMatrix will also set up your connection string in your web.config file.

WebMatrix will then show you its start up screen.  Note that the files were automatically saved in the path “D:\My Documents\My Web Sites\DotNetNuke® Community Edition” and the URL for the application is “http://localhost:44796”.  IIS Developer Express like the Visual Studio Web Server (Cassini) uses port numbers for each site.

Figure 6 – WebMatrix after creating your new DNN Application

Now we have downloaded DNN we are ready to launch DotNetNuke’s own Install.  We can select Run and choose one of the installed browsers (Figure 7).  Later, especially when making changes to skins etc. we can use the “Open in all browsers” option to launch all installed browsers at once and compare how the site displays in different browsers.

Figure 7 – Launch the DotNetNuke Web Install

You will be immediately presented with DNN’s Install Wizard (Figure 8).  And when I say immediately I mean just that.  The startup appeared to be quite a bit faster than launching DNN as a full blown IIS Application.

Figure 8 – The DNN Install Wizard

You can install DNN as you would in any other situation.  I chose the Auto option and after about 20-30 secs I was able to redirect to the home page of my new site (Figure 9)

Figure 9 – The Completed DNN Install.

So that’s it.  In less than 5 minutes from start to finish I was able to install DNN on my local machine using WebMatrix, the Web Gallery and IIS Developer Express.  In future blogs I will review some of the features of the WebMatrix IDE and how to publish my completed site.