DotNetNuke Skinning Tutorial Book Review

As a developer one of my greatest areas of weakness is in the area of design. Where I have always been able to make a site functional, my designs have been merely passable.

The author, Darren Neese, takes you from concept to finished product. This book is aimed at beginners, so it is perfect for me, perhaps it will fit your DotNetNuke Skinning needs as well.

First, let me say this, I love DotNetNuke. There, I said it.

Second, I hate skinning DotNetNuke. As a developer that is my weakest area. In fact, to quote Scott Hanselman:

"The difference between a Designer and Developer, when it comes to design skills, is the difference between shooting a bullet and throwing it." - Scott Hanselman with apologies to Larry Miller

DotNetNuke Skinning Tutorial makes the design element of DotNetNuke a little easier. It does not automatically make your designs pretty, but it opens up the mystery of creating a design that is functional and usable.

I must say thanks to PACKT Publishing for continuing to produce books that break down complicated task in a clear and concise way.

If there were one thing that I would add in the next edition of the book, since they use the DotNetNuke Starter Kit install package, is to expose how to install the Starter Kit on Visual Studio 2008, when Visual Studio 2005 is not installed on the PC. I understand that when the book was written VS2008 was not released and by the next release of the book this may be fixed on the DotNetNuke side, but if it is not, there is a small amount of pain to install the package on VS2008.

Since this is my blog, and I have the space to do it here, I'll tell you how to install the Starter Kit on VS2008.

As of DotNetNuke 4.8.4 this issue still exists, the DotNetNuke installation package for the Starter Kit looks for Visual Studio 2005 to make sure that it is installed. They don't look for "At Least" VS2005, they look specifically VS2005. If you try to install the Starter Kit with VS2008 only, like I have on my new laptop, an error occurs because VS2005 is not installed.

The solution to this issue is to install, even if temporarily, the Visual Web Developer 2005. First, it's free, second it's necessary to get the Starter Kit installed.

It's that simple, but it took a little bit of pain, as I mentioned above, to figure that one out.