This is our site done with DNN: http://www.christianmusictimes.com" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">http://www.christianmusictimes.com We switched to DNN last year on a GoDaddy hosted plan and then recently upgraded to a virtual dedicated server plan. In both cases we must install the DNN site to a subdirectory of the root and now with the site built I ended up using a "301 redirect" to get people to the first page of the site. One question that I have is how can I get to the homepage of the DNN site without the subdirectory displaying in the browser. I currently redirect: http://www.christianmusictimes.com" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">http://www.christianmusictimes.com to http://www.christianmusictimes.com" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">http://www.christianmusictimes.com/cmtllc/Default.aspx I am a newbie to DNN (using it about 4-6 months) and have looked at the "portal alias" and "redirects", not sure where to go from here.

I think this will be a combination of the settings within your hosting provider combined with the portal alias settings in DotNetNuke.

If you login to your installation as admin or host
Go to the admin menu / site settings
scroll to the bottom to Portal Alias

What is the website address that is listed here?

To add a portal alias:

Click "Add New HTTP Alias"
Enter: www.christianmusictimes.com
do not include the http://

Click on Update

Your DNN installation will display whenever anyone types in your main address.

If you are still displaying the folder, then you need to speak to your hosting provider on how to set up your domain to point to the folder without the folder being displayed in the URL.

Thanks,

I had to manually delete your last post because for some reason it caused an error in the forum: - Here's a copy of your post from my email:


OK I went back and checked and I am using DNN 3.1.1 and the portal alias information is under my HOST account (i.e. host login then HOST menu and PORTAL option). Under that area I have: www.christianmusictimes.com www.christianmusictimes.com/cmtllc 216.69.167.105 216.69.167.105/cmtllc The IP addresses were initially where DNN was installed as I installed before moving the domain christianmusictimes.com to it. In addition I have set up a "default.aspx" file that contains my 301 redirect info. When I initially setup DNN on this computer I had to select a subdirectory to place my portal files into. Because of this and it iseems to be a normal part of installation my domain points to the root directory and I need to use the 301 redirect to get to my subdirectory. =========== DEFAULT.ASPX

Have you contacted your host and asked them to point your domain name direct to the folder? I would have thought they could solve this for you. Thanks,

Thanks for fixing the post. Yes, my original communication to them was about changing the DNS setting and they gave me a generic response. It was working but I was beginning to notice issues when setting up webmail and the like. When I spoke with them this afternoon I discovered that they were forwarding my domain but had not changed the DNS settings to actually point to my server's IP. That has been done now and I am in the propigation period (about 24-48 hours).

OK well it looks like we got past the propigation and in the interim because I am on a virtual dedicated server. I had to get back into IIS. I was able to set the HOME directory to the subdirectory that DNN was installed in. I was able to eliminate the need for the 301 redirect. But on the downside I ended up having to change the references throughout the site to eliminate the subdirectory reference.

OK I have been working on this site for a few months and climbing the "newbie" learning curve. Could I have someone preview this site and give me some feedback? I also would like to know if it is possible to allow users to select skins on their own to apply under their registration? To allow some user customization based on whether they are reqistered users or not. Thanks much.

It is definitely possible to set up user customised skins, but I'm not sure how you implement it. - I would pop across to the main DNN forum for this, I'm sure I have seen it discussed in there before. - Let us know if you come across a solution and I could document it into a tutorial for everyone.

For the site, looking good - First thing I noticed was that you need to change the image for 'Artist Updates' - SwitchFoot - the picture is 500kb you need to compress it so that it is a similar size to the other pics on the page - eg. around 6kb

The next thing to look at is how you add text to the page. - Do not format your text by selecting the font drop down list in the Text/HTML editor. - You need to set the formatting of the text within the skin.css file.

The reason for this is that if you use the font drop down list, it adds a ton of font tags to your code which means the file size of your pages is much larger than they need to be.

This is a common mistake that everyone makes when first using DNN.

Check out this article for further info:
Bad practices when working with the Text HTML module

I can see that on this page below for instance the text has been copied from a Word doc - check out the Bad Practices article covering this
http://www.christianmusictimes.com/...fault.aspx

On the right side of the menu, this token is displaying: [DNNDESIGNER] so you may want to look at that.

If I had designed the skin I would also look at how the containers are created because they add a lot of code into the sourcecode of the skin to create the rounded corner effect. - I guess you have got hold of this skin from the DNN Designer website so you may not want to tackle this. - It's not necessarily a problem, but just be aware that if you add a lot of these containers to a page it will slow down the load time for the page.

A few things for you to think about, thanks,