This is a tutorial, or bug fix, about a problem that has occurred within our Project templates for a long time, but it is not a problem that we’ve been able to track down a 100% preventative solution for.

After creating a module using our Template in Visual Studio, the next time you go to Load the website in a browser, you may run across a very generic and unuseful error. The site will fail to load, and you will see a Generic error message in the URL, something along the lines of:

&error=An%20unexpected%20error%20has%20occurred&content=0

The good news is, this is a super easy fix, and usually only occurs the first time, not ever occuring again with existing projects. Here's the quick fix:

  1. Load the IIS Manager (start>run>inetmgr.exe)
  2. Expand the Tree view on the left side of the screen until you see the SITES folder
  3. Expand the Sites folder until you find your development site
  4. Expand your development site (DNNDEV.ME) until you see the DesktopModules folder
  5. If the DesktopModules folder has an "arrow" on it, IIS thinks it is a virtual directory, and this is what causes the error above. Right click on the DesktopModules folder, choose Delete.
  6. Reload the site in your web browser, and the error should go away. Do not simply refresh the browser, as the error is in the URL and will likely just reload the error page even though you've fixed the problem

If you happen to know what causes VisualStudio to do this, so that we can come up with a fix, please let us know!