Use Visual Web Developer Express (VWD) with DotNetNuke!

• Not possible you say! DotNetNuke uses a very complex n-tier framework which will not work with Visual Web Developer Express(VWD). You're right, but you don't need it to. That's the point of DotNetNuke. Think of DotNetNuke as a souped-up Windows SharePoint Services (WSS). With the SmartDNNModule you can use any .net language VB.Net, C#.Net, C++.Net, J# .Net user control, no special hooks or programming just need the SmartDNNModule.
  
  Not possible you say! DotNetNuke uses a very complex n-tier framework which will not work with Visual Web Developer Express(VWD). You're right, but you don't need it to. That's the point of DotNetNuke. Think of DotNetNuke as a souped-up Windows SharePoint Services (WSS). With the SmartDNNModule you can use any .net language VB.Net, C#.Net, C++.Net, J# .Net user control, no special hooks or programming just need the SmartDNNModule.
  
  In this article I am going to show you how to use VWD (also same steps for VS) to build a user control and load it into a DotNetNuke website.
  
  Programmers work smarter not harder!
  
  Resources:
  
  What is DotNetNuke?
  
  Visual Web Developer Download - Free development environment available from the Microsoft Website.
  
  Why is DotNetNuke so popular? (not my site just found it on google)
  
  * DNN also includes Windows,forms,or ldap authentication
  * Advanced Security/roles/membership framework
  * Skinning….thousands ready to buy CHEAP from snowcovered.com
  * DNN 4 Supports ASP.Net 1.1 and 2.0 usercontrols
  * A huge community of developers and experts
  
  What is SmartDNNModule?
  
  * It is a user control wrapper that is used to create DNN modules from any user control.
  
  Article:
  
  Basic assumption; that you know how to use Visual Web Developer Express or Visual Studio.
  
  Step1. Create a user control.
  
  * In Visual Web Developer Express create a new website
  * File >>New File>>Web User Control (see image)
  * Click add
  

Step 2.

Add controls and or any programming to your user control:

Step 3.

Create your “UserControls” folder in your dotnetnuke root folder hint your UserControls folder should be at the same level as the bin folder:

Step 4.

Put the .ascx and .ascx.resx files in the usercontrols folder (in ASP.NET 2.0 just the .ascx):

Step 5.

Put the .dll into the bin folder (Visual Studio only – VWD is inline code skip this step)

Step 6.

Upload SmartDNNModule.zip into your DNN portal and onto a page then type in the name of your usercontrol(s) – remember in DNN you can have a view and edit controls or just a view. In this sample we just have a view control.

Click Create Module: and wait for the page to finish loading then click on the page link to refresh the page:

That’s it! You can create any user control with any .Net compliant language and load it into a DNN portal installation.

SOURCE:http://www.wwwcoder.com/main/parentid/224/site/6108/68/default.aspx