We recommend that you maintain 3 functional types of installs:
Live Site: This is your public-facing live site.
Staging Site: This is a copy of your live site, usually installed on a separate server. Modifications should be deployed and reviewed here before pushing them to the live site, to protect your live site from issues and down time.
Development Site: This is where skinning or code modifications should be made initially. This install is generally the one connected to a source control repository, and is usually installed on one or more developers' local computers. Changes made here should be deployed to the staging site for testing before 'going live'.
Install 3rd-Party Requirements
The following 3 sections cover the installation of 3rd-party software required for the AspDotNetStorefront software to run.
Customers installing the software on shared hosting accounts can probably skip the directions in this section, as most hosting companies will already have these components installed.
IIS
Windows 8 should come with IIS7 pre-installed, but you may have to enable some features that are not turned on by default. To do so, follow these steps:
Open Control Panel, either by searching for it or right-clicking on the Windows button from the desktop and clicking on Control Panel, then click on 'Programs'.
Next, click on 'Turn Windows features on or off'.
In the window that opens, ensure that all of the options shown below are checked:
Click “OK” at the bottom, and wait for installation to complete.
.NET Framework 4.5
Most Windows 8 computers will already have this installed. You can verify this by going to Windows Button -> Control Panel -> Programs -> Programs and Features, then verifying that 'Microsoft >NET Framework 4.5 SDK' is in the list of installed programs. If you are missing it, the download is available at http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=30653.
Microsoft SQL 2012 Express and Server Management Studio Express
See this page for instructions on installing the database components.
Installing AspDotNetStorefront Software
File Setup
The first step in installing the AspDotNetStorefront software is to get the files in place on your machine.
Log in to http://license.aspdotnetstorefront.com and click the link to Download the software next to your license. Note: Your licenses page may vary slightly.
The download file is a self-extracting executable. Once the download has completed, double-click the file and follow the prompts to extract the files to your hard drive. The default location for sites in IIS is C:\inetpub\wwwroot but you can put them elsewhere if preferred.
Windows 8 uses IIS 7.5, which pretty much handles file permissions for websites on its own through the ApplicationPoolIdentity user. If you run into any issues with file permissions during use of the software (unable to save images, encrypt the web.config, etc) then your host or server administrator has likely changed the user account that your site is running under. They will need to give that user account read/write/modify access to the web/images folder.
Database Setup
Next, you need to create the database that the software will store your data in.
Note: The screenshots in this section are of a standard SQL Server Management Studio install with no extra security measures in place. Your screens may look slightly different depending on the setup and security policies your administrator/host uses.
Open Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio and log in with the credentials given to you by your system administrator or host or that you created while installing SQL Server earlier.
Right-click on Databases in the tree view and click New Database.
Enter a name for the database and click OK.
Click the + next to Databases and your new database should show in the list. Click on it to highlight it, then click File -> Open -> File. Navigate to the /db folder where you just extracted the new storefront files, and double click the ‘Create AspDotNetStorefront Database’ file.
Click the Execute button.
Let the script run until it completes. At the bottom of the window you should see a 'Query executed successfully' message. If you see 'Query completed with errors', scroll through the Messages window and find any text in red, and send it to the Support team in a new ticket for assistance.
Navigate to the /web folder where you extracted the storefront files earlier and open up the web.config file in a text editor (Notepad, Notepad++, etc).
Find this line and change the ‘TBD’ to your own EncryptKey value. The value can be any combination of letters and numbers, and should be at least 10 characters long.
<add key="EncryptKey" value="TBD" />
Then find the 'DBConn' line and change the following values:
Data Source – This is the server/instance name where SQL is installed. If installing on a local server, this will often be simply ‘local’ or the machine name.
Initial Catalog – This is the name of the database you just created.
User Id – the ID used to connect to the database
Password – the password used to connect to the database
This information was all set up during the SQL Server install you did earlier. If SQL Server was already installed on your computer, your host or server admin will have to provide the information. AspDotNetStorefront cannot tell you what to use for these values.
Save your changes.
IIS Setup
The last step in the install is configuring IIS. Note: Your server admin or host may have to provide additional steps for this portion of the install, depending on the server configuration. These steps cover a basic install.
First, open IIS Manager and expand the tree to view the folders under Default Web Site:
Right-click on Default Web Site, and click 'Add Application'.
Enter a name for your site in the Alias field. This will be the virtual directory name you access the site at on your computer (e.g. http://localhost/myalias).
Click the ‘…’ button and use the browse window to select the folder that contains the web.config file you modified earlier (this is the /Web folder out of the box). Click OK.
Right-click the application you just added under Default Web Site, click 'Manage Application', then ‘Browse’. Your site should open in a new browser window – installation is complete! You can access the admin console by adding /admin to the URL opened when you clicked Browse.
Install Demo Data
This part of the install process is optional. The steps below will add ~200 products and some product groups to organize them to your store, along with images for the products. It is recommended to install this demo data if you are looking for some guidance on how to set up products and product groups or just need to set up a store to quickly test something.
The SQL script run below clears out several tables in the database before adding data. Do not run this on a database you have already added anything to that you need to keep.
Open SQL Server Management studio and select the database you created during the install. Click File -> Open -> File and browse to the demo data/db folder wherever you extracted the AspDotNetStorefront software files to on your hard drive. Double click the 'Install Demo Website Data.sql' file.
Click the Execute button to run the script against your new database.
Let the script run until it completes. At the bottom of the window you should see a 'Query executed successfully' message. If you see 'Query completed with errors', scroll through the Messages window and find any text in red, and send it to the Support team in a new ticket for assistance.
Navigate to the demo data/web/images folder on your hard drive, and copy the 2 folders you see there. Then navigate to the /web folder you installed the software to earlier (where the web.config file is), and open the /images folder there. Paste the 2 folders you copied earlier. If you are prompted to overwrite any files, be sure you know what they are before clicking Yes! This likely means that you had set up products previously, and those images will be lost.
Log into the admin console of your new store and click the 'Refresh Store' button. That's it, you should have products on your store!
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