Installing Umbraco 7 (Part 1) - Setting up Visual Studio

Using my personal experience, I found Umbraco quite tough to get up and running, and I believe that if you have never used it before, then you might also find it challenging to get it (manually) installed and configured correctly so that you can begin using the CMS for development.

For new starters, if you want to be set up quickly, then there is the option to easily install the latest version using the web platform installer or WebMatrix as these tools will automatically download and install any dependencies for you.

However, having experimented both approaches, I would recommend setting everything up manually so that you can benefit from using an integrated development environment (IDE) such as Visual Studio to write your code. A major advantage of writing your code from within in Visual Studio is that it will provide you with intellisense for auto-completion which is something that is not offered from within the Umbraco Back Office.

This is part one in a series of blog posts that will detail the process which I followed to manually install Umbraco 7 through Visual Studio 2013, configured to be hosted locally via IIS 7.5 (Windows 7 OS) and database creation using Microsoft SQL Server 2008R2. Hopefully, it will provide some useful information to anyone who may be just starting out on their Umbraco adventure.

If you are struggling while following these blog posts, please don't hesitate to get in touch with me or you can visit the Our Umbraco Forum area, and I'm sure someone will help you out – they are a friendly bunch ;)

Polite Notice: With regards to working with Umbraco, I am still very much learning the ropes myself, but I continue to research and ask questions to help enhance my existing knowledge so that I can keep applying what I believe are the best practices.

With this in mind, the information that I have made available is purely based on my experiences. Therefore, if you are reading my posts and there happens to be a better way to complete a certain process, or you feel that I have explained something wrong, please get in touch with me so that I can make the necessary updates to provide more accurate information to help others.

The primary aim of producing this series of blog posts and making them available online is to hopefully provide a helping hand to anyone who is just starting out with Umbraco and trying to get up and running quickly. Using my experiences, I know that I would have benefited from something similar when I first started out, so hopefully my posts will help someone.

Prerequisites

Before we begin, you will need to ensure that the following programs are installed and correctly configured your computer:

• Visual Studio 2013 (Express)
• Microsoft SQL Server (Express - I am using 2008R2)
• Internet Information Services (IIS 7.5 -  configured on your computer)
• NuGet Package Manager (Installed with Visual Studio)

Let’s Get Started!

Downloading & Installing Umbraco CMS with Visual Studio 2013 & NuGet

Step 1 – Open Visual Studio 2013, go to FILE and select the NEW PROJECT option.

Step 2 – In the left-hand pane, choose VISUAL C# and then from the main pane select ASP.NET WEB APPLICATION as the project Type. Name your project something suitable, I have called my project InstallingUmbracoDemo.

Step 3 – In the next screen, select to use an EMPTY PROJECT template for your new ASP.NET Project and all options to add folders and core references are left unchecked (Umbraco will create these for you). Select OK and visual studio will create your new project based on the settings that have been defined.

Step 4 – Next you need to install Umbraco into your empty visual studio ASP.NET project. This is done via NUGET PACKAGE MANAGER and can be completed by navigating to TOOLS > NUGET PACKAGE MANAGER and selecting MANAGE NUGET PACKAGES FOR SOLUTION.

Step 5 – When the manage NuGet package dialog opens, ensure that the ONLINE option is selected from the left-hand pane and then type ‘Umbraco CMS’ into the search box. From the options in the search results list select to ‘install’ the UMBRACO CMS package.

Step 6 – After you select the 'install' button, the latest version of Umbraco CMS will begin to download.

Step 7 – Once the latest version of Umbraco CMS package has completed downloading, in the SELECT PROJECTS dialog ensure that you place a check in the visual studio solution (installingUmbracoDemo) and your new empty ASP.NET project (installingUmbracoDemo) to tell NuGet that you want to install the package to these locations. Select OK.

Step 8 – NuGet will begin to install the package into your new empty ASP.NET project which was created in step 3 (installingUmbracoDemo).

Step 9 – When prompted, ensure that you accept the license terms for the Umbraco CMS package by selecting ‘I Accept'.

Step 10 – Once NuGet has completed installing the Umbraco CMS package the last thing you need to do is build the solution in Visual studio. Navigate to BUILD and select BUILD SOLUTION (ctrl+shift+B).

 Step 11 – Once you have built your solution, left-click the project in the SOLUTION EXPLORER so that it becomes selected.

Step 12 – With your project selected, navigate to the toolbar at the top of the SOLUTION EXPLORER and chose the SHOW ALL FILES icon to display the additional files that have not included in your project by default. With show all files selected, you should notice that there are many ‘Umbraco specific’ files and folders that are not currently included in the project (Greyed out). This is just an FYI to let you know that they are there.

Step 13 As per the comments below - The team at Umbraco have built the NuGet package to specifically only include the necessary files into the solution. There are a lot of pre-built files that should never be altered by end users, so there is no need to include them in your solution. Including them will also show lots of warnings in visual studio.