Deploying DotNetNuke and separate ASP.NET Applicat

Question

I am making this in a proactive attempt to head off any potential problems which could arise from this. The situation is that we are developing an ASP.NET application for a client which will handle the online ordering from their customers. This application is going to be using the same database that their current WinForms application uses (no real issue here).

At the same time we are developing a new front-end website for them using DotNetNuke. The DotNetNuke app will simply be linking to the ASP.NET application for the customers to submit their orders (no need for them to communicate back and forth, etc.)

The plan is to host both applications on the same box at the client location. What I am looking for are potential problems or setup tips which would prevent possible conflict between the two apps (web.config conflicts, etc.) Is there a problem with having both hosted on the same location, how should IIS be set up, etc.?

If there are any external resources also available which could address this, please feel free to link them as well.

Answer 1

Option 1: Make all the apps separate virtual directories off of the root website. Then have the root document redirect you to the proper subdirectory for the default application for that website(DNN).

Option 2: (DotNetNuke in root, other site in subdirectory) There will be many issues with web.config inheritance if the new application is not built with DotNetNuke, but you can get around these by blocking inheritance of the root web.config. Basically you add the following to your root web.config(DNN) file.

<location path="." inheritInChildApplications="false">
    <system.web></system.web>
</location>

Option 3: As Scott said, create seperate sites with differnt subdomains and link them together. You can setup a redirect so whatever.com/order sends a user to order.whatever.com.

Answer 2

Just an FYI, if you use inheritInChildApplications in DNN 4.7-4.9.2 (haven't verified 5.0) you will run into ScriptManager errors, previous versions of DNN don't have the problem.

Answer 3

We host a DNN site for our corporate site on the same Windows 2003 server with a bunch of other sites (.NET 2.0, SugarCRM, and even some WordPress instances with PHP extensions in IIS). These sites are 'separate' websites, and not subwebs of the default site. It's a real melting pot, and it works well. We did create some separate app pools for the PHP, .NET 2.0, and .NET 3.0/5 sites to ensure that they did not foul each other.