Installing Episerver

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

In this topic

Prerequisites
Installing through reference architecture
Installing CMS
Installing Commerce
Installing Search & Navigation
Installing Tracking & Personalization
Installing Marketing Automation components
Installing other add-ons
Cloud deployment

Prerequisites

You can install the desired Episerver products individually, with or without sample templates. This is useful if you want to explore each product and its components in more detail, or build a site from scratch with more control. You can also use the Episerver Foundation reference architecture to get a solution with multiple products quickly up and running.

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 to get a jump-start when developing websites. To install the Episerver extension:
1. In 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 the NuGet feed.
If your solution will be running in the cloud, follow the steps below to install the desired Episerver components, and see Cloud deployment how to proceed to deploy the solution to cloud environments.

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 through reference architecture

The Episerver Foundation reference architecture is an open source option to install an Episerver solution with multiple products. Foundation offers a structured and modular starting point, allowing you to select products as projects to include or exclude from the solution. See Episerver Foundation to learn how to install and get started.

Installing CMS

Install an Episerver CMS website, empty or with the "Alloy" sample templates.

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, as WebForms is deprecated.
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. See Installing Episerver Commerce for a video illustrating the 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 Search & Navigation

Episerver Search & Navigation consists of a service that you sign up to, and client packages that you install on your site. See Creating your project how to add Search & Navigation to your solution.

Integrating Search & Navigation with Commerce

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

Installing Tracking & Personalization

The Episerver Personalization product suite adds personalized content and product recommendations, and personalized search results to the site. You can also add components to store and analyze visitor activity through Episerver Visitor Intelligence. Tracking and personalization components are based on services that you sign up to, and client packages that you install on the site.

See the following how to install and get started:

Installing Marketing Automation components

The Marketing Automation product suite includes Episerver Campaign for cross-channel automated campaign management, and a number of marketing automation connectors for popular marketing tools like Delivra, Salesforce, and Microsoft Dynamics. Marketing automation components are based on services that you sign up to, and client packages that you install on the site.

See the following how to install and get started:

Installing other add-ons

You can extend Episerver through add-ons available for a wide selection of areas, for example analytics, search optimization, and marketing automation. Most add-ons are installed as NuGet packages, see Episerver add-ons and Installing add-ons.

If your solution will be using the Episerver Digital Experience Platform cloud services, see Requirements for supported add-ons.

Cloud deployment

There are different options for managing and deploying Episerver solutions in the cloud. Before deploying, ensure that you have followed the requirements and recommendations to optimize your solution for cloud-based environments.