I apologize for asking, what seems to be an elementary question for this forum. 

I have done some work with module creation but I have not been able to locate any resources discussing working with an existing module.  I did read Module Development Guide (Part1) and the code in Part2 both by Shaun Walker and while this was good it appeared to me it essentially addressed creating the Survey module from scratch (with code pasted in) rather than editing an existing module, which is my goal.

I am interested in Modifying a DNN Project Module, specifically the Announcements module at this time.

I am running Visual Web Developer 2008 on Windows XP with .NET version 3.5.  I have installed DNN version and created a Web Site for this purpose.

I have also downloaded

Module - Announcements

04.00.01

Source

1/27/2008

4.06.02

but when I view this zip file, Announcements_04.00.01_Source.zip, I notice the two dlls:  DotNetNuke.Modules.Announcements.SqlDataProvider.dll and DotNetNuke.Modules.Announcements.dll

I assume I need to install the module without the dlls in order to modify the code but this is where I become stumped.

I did peruse the inner zip file, DNN_Announcements_zip, which is inside Announcements_04.00.01_Source.zip.  This inner zip contains DotNetNuke.Announcements.sln which, based on a post I found in this forum, I opened in Visual Web Developer 2008 but I don't know where to go from there.

If anyone could point my in the right direction to locate more information on this, I would greatly appreciate it.

Thank you for your time.

Sincerely,

- Sal

Thank you to Mike for pointing me in a direction to pursue.

I have tried creating the files for the module and filling them with the code available in Announcements_04.00.01_Source.zip.   When I attempt to "Build Web Site" in VS Web Dev 2008 ExpressI receive the following three errors:

Error 1 Could not load type 'DotNetNuke.Modules.Announcements.EditAnnouncements'. \DNN_Website_ModAnnounce\DesktopModules\Announcements\EditAnnouncements.ascx 6

Error 2 Could not load type'DotNetNuke.Modules.Announcements.Settings'. \DNN_Website_ModAnnounce\DesktopModules\Announcements\Settings.ascx 1

Error 3 Could not load type 'DotNetNuke.Modules.Announcements.Announcements'. \DNN_Website_ModAnnounce\DesktopModules\Announcements\Announcements.ascx 1

If I place the two dll files, DotNetNuke.Modules.Announcements.SqlDataProvider.dll and DotNetNuke.Modules.Announcements.dll, in the /Bin folder the Web Site Builds successfully.

Further research, specifically in the Announcements Module Forum, revealed a very similar inquiry by ChadimusPrime which does not have any replies at this time. http://www.dotnetnuke.com/Community/Forums/tabid/795/forumid/12/threadid/237469/scope/posts/Default.aspx

Any further suggestions or directions to relevant resources would be greatly appreciated.

Sincerely,

- Sal

Thank you to Sebastian for his reply.  I believe this has helped me wrap my head around what is going on.

This has lead me to the following conclusions, which I would appreciate confirmation of.

1.  The appropriate file to open to work on the project would be the .sln file?

2.  Visual Web Developer 2008 EXPRESS Edition does not support compiling .dll files?  (I am currently using Express)

3.  If I do upgrade to Visual Web Developer 2008 Studio and wish to develop iteratively, I will need to compile the .dll for each iteration?

Thanks for helping me understand DNN more deeply.

Sincerely,

- Sal