Installing Episerver

This topic describes a first-time installation of an Episerver CMS website with the latest updates and with or without sample templates, Episerver Commerce, Episerver Search & Navigation (formerly Episerver Find) and other add-ons.

In this topic

Prerequisites
Installing CMS
Installing Commerce
Installing Search & Navigation
Installing add-ons
Cloud deployment

Prerequisites

Before installing, check the system requirements to ensure that your installation environment has the required components and versions.

The following components are needed to follow the instructions described here:

Microsoft Visual Studio for installing and updating Episerver. (Community, Professional or Enterprise)
Episerver Visual Studio extension, which is a full set of templates for MVC and Web Forms to get a jump-start when developing websites.
1. To install from Visual Studio, select Tools > Extensions and Updates.
2. In the extensions window, select Online, and type episerver in the search box.
3. Select Episerver CMS Visual Studio Extension and click Download (or Update if already installed).
4. Restart Visual Studio.
The Episerver NuGet feed source http://nuget.episerver.com/feed/packages.svc/ added to your Visual Studio. Needed to add Episerver Commerce, Episerver Search & Navigation and other add-ons to your solution, and to upgrade your project with the latest. See Installing Episerver updates on how to add a NuGet feed.

Note: You can order a time-limited demo license for evaluation purposes, see Episerver License Center (a license is not required when using IIS Express). You need a commercial Episerver license for testing and production environments.

Installing CMS

Install an Episerver CMS website, empty or with the "Alloy" sample templates (MVC/Web Forms).

Note: The description below applies to Visual Studio 2019. The steps are similar in Visual Studio 2017 and 2015. See Installing Episerver for a video illustrating the procedure.

Open Visual Studio and select File > New > Project.
Search for the Episerver Web Site project template, select it and click Next.
Provide a name for your project and click Create.
Select Alloy (MVC/WebForms) to create a site with sample content, or Empty for a site without templates. It is recommended to use MVC for new projects.
Select a search option:
- For an Alloy site, select Episerver Find to use Episerver Search & Navigation, or Episerver Search to use a basic search.
- For an empty site, the Configure Search option is disabled, and no search will be installed. You can add Episerver Search & Navigation or Episerver Search later if desired.
Click OK. The project is created. When finalized, build and open the website in a browser.
Log in to the site:
- For an empty site, add /episerver to the site URL, and log in using your Windows credentials. For more information on how to configure your empty project further, see Create a starter project.
- For Alloy MVC, you will be prompted to create an administrator account (site is using ASP.NET Identity). Provide the account credentials, click Register and you will be logged in. See also Install a sample site.
- For Alloy WebForms, select the Log in link at the bottom of the start page, and log in using your Windows credentials. Note that you must be local admin on the server you are running Episerver on. If not, create a new local user with admin rights under Control panel > Local Users and Groups, and log in using that account.

Installing Commerce

Note: The description below applies to Visual Studio 2019. The steps are similar in Visual Studio 2017 and 2015. The video Installing Episerver Commerce illustrates the installation procedure.

Empty Commerce site

These steps install an empty website locally with Episerver CMS and Episerver Commerce. Note that a Commerce installation has two sites; a front-end site with CMS and Commerce, and a back-end site with Commerce Manager.

To create a sample site locally with templates, see Installing Quicksilver.
To deploy a Commerce site to the cloud, see Install an Episerver Commerce site to run on Azure Web Sites.

Part 1: Create the front-end site with CMS

Open Visual Studio and select File > New > Project.
Search for the Episerver Web Site project template, select it and click Next.
Provide a name for your project, make sure .NET Framework is set to 4.6.1 or higher.
Click Create.
In the Select a template dialog, select Empty and click OK. Visual Studio creates the project.

Part 2: Install Commerce components on the front-end site

In Solution Explorer (CTRL + ALT + L), expand the project you just created, right-click on References and select Manage NuGet Packages.
In the Package source dropdown, select Episerver.
Click Browse and enter Commerce in the search field.
Select the EPiServer.Commerce (main) package and click Install.
When the installation completes, a Readme.txt file appears.
Close the Readme.txt file, select EPiServer.Commerce.UI.ManagerIntegration and click Install. This adds the Commerce front-end components.
When the installation completes, a Readme.txt file appears.

Part 3: Create the back-end site

In the Solution Explorer, right click the solution you created in part 1 and select Add > New Project.
Select ASP.NET Web Application (.NET Framework) as the project type and click Next.
Give the project a name and click Create.
Select Empty and click Create.

Part 4: Install Commerce Manager on the back-end site

Right click on the back-end site that you created in part 3 and select Manage NuGet Packages.
In the Package source dropdown, select Episerver.
Click Browse and enter Commerce in the search field.
Select the EPiServer.CommerceManager package and click Install.
When installation completes, a Readme.txt file appears.
Close the Readme.txt file and select the EPiServer.ServiceLocation.StructureMap package and click Install. This adds an implementation of the ServiceLocation / Dependency Injection framework.

Part 5: Final steps

Update the database.
1. Go to Tools > NuGet Package Manager > Package Manager Console.
2. At PM, enter update-epidatabase.
Build the solution (CTRL + SHIFT + B).
Start the front-end site (Ctrl + F5).
When prompted, log in using the default credentials admin/store (remember to change these later).
If you see a screen of migration steps, click Execute all pending steps.
Verify that you can access the edit and admin views using http://localhost:nnnnn/episerver
(where nnnnn is the port number that is already displayed in the URL).

If you have difficulty accessing Commerce Manager from edit view:

Right-click your back-end site with the Commerce Manager project in Visual Studio.
Select Set as StartUp Project.
Start the Commerce Manager site and log in.
Make the front-end project the start-up project again.

To further set up your Commerce project, continue with the project structure section on Creating your project.

Installing Episerver Search & Navigation

For information about adding Episerver Search & Navigation to your Episerver website, see Creating your project in the Get started with Episerver Search & Navigation section.

Integrating Episerver Search & Navigation with Episerver Commerce

This integration adds specific functionality when using Episerver Search & Navigation with Episerver Commerce. If you want to install this on your website, run the Episerver Search & Navigation content indexing job on the site after the EPiServer.Find.Commerce package is installed. See Integrating Episerver Search & Navigation with Episerver Commerce.

Installing other add-ons

You can extend Episerver through add-ons available for a wide selection of areas, as examples: analytics, search optimization, and marketing automation. Most add-ons are installed as NuGet packages, but other options exist. See Episerver add-ons and Installing add-ons.

Cloud deployment

See Deploying CMS to Azure Web Apps and Deploying Commerce to Azure Web Apps how to deploy solutions to cloud environments. See Deploying if you are running Episerver Customer-Centric Digital Experience Platform (DXP).