VSeWSS 1.3 nightmare

As I'm casually sitting around on a Thursday I decided to start making some custom web parts so I installed the Visual Studio 2008 extensions for SharePoint on my dev server (Windows 2003, running MOSS 2007 sp2).

I started with the good ole' Hello World Web Part, easy - great - done - deploy and ERROR. The error logs can be found on C:\Documents and Settings\Default User\Application Data\Microsoft\VSeWSS 1.3

1st error I get is: Microsoft.SharePoint.Tools.WebNotFoundExeception: No SharePoint site exists at the specified URL. - Go back into the project properties > debug tab > URL I changed the URL from http://name/ to http://machinename/ so, deploy again and we get error #2

2nd error: VSeWSS Service Error: Feature GUID is not installed in this farm, and can not be added to this scope. - when I figure this one out, I'll post an update.

All I have to say is what a POS!!!!! I gave up on trying to figure it out in VS. I went to Central Admin > Operations > Manage Solutions - the dumb solution is there so I deployed it. Then went to my site collection settings > Site Collection Features and activated the stupid web part.

After all that, a whole 4.5 hours later the web part is on a page and working. Next time just take a pencil and stab me in the eye.