Building DotNetNuke 5.6.2 Source with Visual Studio 2010 Professional

This weekend, I have finally decided to download the DotNetNuke Community Edition source code and decided to build it with Visual Studio 2010 Professional Edition.

It took several trial and errors so I am going to write down what has worked, mainly so that the next time I will remember how I did it and worked.

• If you are on Windows 7 (and should be), be sure to permanently enable the Visual Studio to run as Administrator. This will save a lot of time re-running it as DNN projects install and configure IIS 7 and that requires an elevated privilege. If I tell you to just open the  privilege setting is in the Property of the Shortcut, then you know how to set this up even if you have not done that before. Still not making sense? See this Technet KB Article
• Make sure you have a working SMTP server. You will most likely need to setup an email address then a password which is usually needed for modern SMTP servers.
• Unzip it to Some Simple Directory, like C:\DNN  You will be editing the solution file pointing to this new location. When the solution loads, it will create a Virtual Dir on IIS 7 (that means you have to install IIS 7 beforehand
• Add Web Management Tools -> IIS 6 Management Compatibility -> IIS Management Console AND IIS Metabase and IIS 6 configuration compatibility
• Under the World Wide Web Services -> Application Development Features, ASP.NET should be added.
• Make a first backup copy of the Unzipped version to somewhere safe. You will likely mess up the next step and will likely accidentally launch the solution (.sln) file before the required hand-edit,and corrupt it beyond repair.
• Don't Launch the Solution File yet. You need to hand-edit it first.
• Text Edit the Web Root name (the line that has http: in it) to something short and sweet like http://localhost/dnn  
• To make sure you don't do an accidental start of the project, edit the solution file using Notepad by starting the Notepad then do the File->Open.
• Go and find any places that has E:\blah\blah on it, and make the change that correspond to where you put the unzipped directory.
• But don't change where it says VirtualPath that will break the loading of the web project.
• If none of the above is making any sense to you, then definitely make a backup of the solution file before you do anything  and ask someone who might know.
• On IIS if you don't have one create an Application Pool to .NET 4.0 Framework
• Set the Application Pool User to Network Service. This can be done in the Advanced property menu. It is a lot simpler for me to use the Network Service than something else especially on a local develop machine. By default the Application Pool it uses is the Default Application Pool.
• Give Full R/W permission to Network Service for the entire DNN tree.
• Backup the DNN Directory to Another Directory. If you (are likely to) fail after the following steps any work you have done won't go to waste.
• Now you can launch the Solution, and let it build. This should go smoothly.
• Create a Database
• Create a login account for the database on the SQL (Express) server and assign the dbo capability to the account. 
• Copy development.config to web.config
• Set the web project as the startup (this should be indicated as the URL you specified when you edited the solution file.)
• Go to IIS Admin and make sure that the Virtual Directory is pointing at "Website" directory within  the  DNN development directory tree and assign the Application Pool that is running the .NET Framework 4.0
• Then start the the debug session of the web project.
• If everything compiles fine and the web site runs OK, then exit the Visual Studio, make a backup copy of the entire directory. In fact, you should always do this before a major change to your project, such as adding or removing a project. It is also a big time saver to back up your DNN database prior to making a major change to the DNN configuration, such as adding or removing a module.

Failure Recovery

The initial debug run goes exactly like installing a brand new site. If the startup jams during SQL script part, then without a hesitation, drop the database and create a fresh one. There will be some unfinished stored procedure or other stuff dangling and it won't install the second time.

Teralic Installation Issues during setup: I ignored this issue and the site is working fine. I will report if there will be issues.