To start development on modules for DotNetNuke you need some software and you can use some software that is not really needed, but handy or timesaving.

First we will give an overview of the software that is usefull to start development of DotNetNuke modules.

• DotNetNuke test website
• Developers tools like Visual Studio 2005 or Visual Web Developer Express

DotNetNuke test website
First we want to stress out the importance of a test website. Many times you want to use development cycles and test your module. In case of any missing files, wrong formatted or bad naming conventions it can be possible that your website can crash. This clears it out that you need a test website, and should not deploy your developed new modules on your production site.

Developers tools
When developing your modules, it is needed that you can check you code, screen and other objects with a developer environment. You can use Visual Web Developer Express as a free development tool; the only disadvantage is that you can not compile you modules. But this is not needed for your modules to run in a production environment. It can be usefull if you want to sell your module and deploy it to 3th parties.

In that case you should use Visual Studio 2005. This enables you also to compile your modules into Private Assemblies (PA or DLL's)

Related issues:

• Resources you can use to build your development environment.