I have run the DNN installs several times, but I ran into a few problems on the 4.4 - that I was able to figure out.

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First problem: You may run into is when the install says it can't find the Compression.config file. Those are purposely placed in a Config directory until needed. Guess what? You need the Compression.Config during the initial installation.

Solution: Move or copy the Compression.config to the root directory of your DNN website.

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Second Problem: I get the dreaded exception of Object reference not set.

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Description: An unhandled exception occurred during the execution of the current web request. Please review the stack trace for more information about the error and where it originated in the code.

Exception Details: System.NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object.

Source Error:

An unhandled exception was generated during the execution of the current web request. Information regarding the origin and location of the exception can be identified using the exception stack trace below.

Stack Trace:

[NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object.] DotNetNuke.Entities.Portals.PortalSettings.GetPortalSettings(Int32 TabId, PortalAliasInfo objPortalAliasInfo) +127 DotNetNuke.Entities.Portals.PortalSettings..ctor(Int32 tabId, PortalAliasInfo objPortalAliasInfo) +93 DotNetNuke.HttpModules.UrlRewriteModule.OnBeginRequest(Object s, EventArgs e) +3718 System.Web.SyncEventExecutionStep.System.Web.HttpApplication+IExecutionStep.Execute() +59 System.Web.HttpApplication.ExecuteStep(IExecutionStep step, Boolean& completedSynchronously) +87

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Solution: This is a permissions error on the website directory. Increase your permissions on your ASP.NET account. Since I was running this on my Windows XP machine, and as Administrator, I was surprised by this. I gave the ASP.NET account full control, and the install completed successfully. Then I reduced the permissions back to Read/Write. Everything works fine.

For more information, check out Shaun Walker's installation directions at the following post.

 

I was doing a review of content management systems, and came across a surprising reference on Wikipedia.

What surprised me was the large number of free CMS products there are, and that most are written in PHP. The reference also goes on to group commercial products into low (<$5k), medium ($5-15k), and a high ($15>) categories. At the low commercial end, the split is between .NET solutions and PHP solutions.

At the high end, surprisingly to me, was the predominance of all the Java solutions.