Hopefully you have noticed the new look and layout of ActiveModules.com.  It's been a very busy weekend.  In addition to changing the design and layout, we have done several things behind the scenes that I thought I would share.  ActiveModules.com started off on DotNetNuke 2.0.3 as a child portal along with about 20+ other sites.  When I upgraded this site to DotNetNuke 3 over a year ago I decided to move it to it's own install.  All that meant was that none of the other sites were actually running on the same DotNetNuke instance.  ActiveModules was still Portal 3 and the other sites were still in the database, just not active.  Since that time this site has been upgraded to DNN 3.0.13, 3.1.1, 3.2.2, 4.0.2, 4.0.3, 4.3.3 and 4.3.4.  

Since I was building out the new design, content and new tools, I felt it was important to start ActiveModules.com on fresh DNN 4.3.5 install package and database.  However, we needed to migrate all of the users, roles and forum content.  If that wasn't enough, I also wanted to get everything back to Portal 0.  All of this is in an effort to greatly improve the site responsiveness. 

Setting up the new ActiveModules.com
The first part of this process was to create a new database and install location for the site.  I only wanted to install the modules that I knew I was going to use.  By eliminating the extra modules it will reduce the number of objects in the database and also reduce the number of assemblies in the bin folder.  I downloaded the DotNetNuke_4.3.5_Install.zip.  After I extracted the zip, I went to /install/modules.  I removed all of the included modules except for HTML and UsersOnline.  If I decide I need something else I can easily install it at a later time.  I also removed all extra images, skins and containers.  VERY IMPORTANT STEP: I opened my existing web.config file for ActiveModules.com and copied the machine keys into my new web.config file.  This will ensure that I don't have any password problems later.  I saved the web.config and installed DotNetNuke.  Now I'm ready to start building out the site. 

In the next part I will talk about setting up the site structure and building the skins.