Install DotNetNuke in Root Directory on GoDaddy Shared Hosting

DotNetNuke is one of the fastest growing CMSs in recent years. There are more and more hosting companies now offering DotNetNuke hosting from shared or virtual dedicated accounts, to dedicated or cloud hosting. Although hosting costs might be high for some businesses, shared hosting is sufficient enough to allow your site to have a simple online presence with low traffic handling.             .

There are downsides of running shared hosting, but you don't have to worry much unless your Web site experiences a spike in traffic. I use GoDaddy shared hosting. One of the downsides of GoDaddy for DotNetNuke is that it won't allow you to have complete control of your URL. It adds an extension at the end proceeded by a slash (i.e. http://mydomain.com/something) for every domain you create.

To overcome this issue, here are the steps needed to change from http://mydomain.com/something to a legitimate http://mydomain.com in GoDaddy.

1. Click on ‘Manage Account’ in the Web hosting page
2. Click on 'Your Files' at the top.
3. Check that the Root and DNN directories have the same permissions
4. Backup both your DNN Web installation and your database
5. Place html file called app_offline.htm into the DNN directory, taking the site offline
6. Update the database table containing the Portal Alias from http://mydomain.com/dnn to simply http://mydomain.com
7. Move the contents of the current DNN folder into the root
8. Update any references you might have in your web.config file to your old site path.
9. Remove the app_offline.htm file

Good luck!