My own experience of setting up DotNetNuke (DNN) 3.1.0. Hopefully somebody will find it useful.

1. Installed a standard Windows 2003 server. Through Manage Your Server wizard, chose custom and installed as an Application Server (IIS and ASP.NET). FrontPage extension and ASP.NET were installed. Install media was required during IIS install;
2. Downloaded DNN 3.1.0. Chose this because the site I volunteered to help out in my spare time is this version. Unzipped to a folder called c:\dnn;
3. Installed Sql Server 2000. I didn’t do Sql Server 2005 install, because I know that Sql Server 2005 needs .Net Framework 2.0. And the site I played with has .Net Framework 1. Since this is my first installation, I did not want to complicate things.
4. Created a database called dnn and created a user. I granted the user db_owner role of the database;
5. Made the mistake of adding ASPNET account to have full access to c:\dnn first initially. Instead, Network Service account should be added and have full access to c:\dnn folder. Just type in Network Service in the lookup box. If the OS is Windows 2000, then ASPNET Account is the right account to add;
6. Ran inetmgr, right click on Default Web Site -> New -> Virtual Directory… Created a virtual directory called DotNetNuke and pointed to c:\dnn;
7. Went to c:\dnn folder. Renamed Release.config file to web.config. Updated database connection setting after the file was renamed;
8. Went to http://localhost/DotNetNuke. Installation started and was successful.

Conceptually, this is actually pretty similar to WordPress’s implementation. Not too bad so far.

In other news, I wanted to create separate feeds for the current categories I have. I made it working but the layout was all messed up, so I need to modify my css style sheet first. I heard there is a style sheet edit plugin for WordPress. Any comments on that?