I’m happy to announce that Sitefinity Community Edition is now available in the Windows Web App Gallery. Sitefinity Community Edition is a free version of Telerik’s popular Sitefinity ASP.NET CMS and is perfect for personal & small web sites (see features).
All applications in the Web App Gallery can be installed using the Web Platform Installer. This is a free tool that makes it easy to download & install popular applications available for the Microsoft Web Platform.
Below is a video and instructions that demonstrate how to install Sitefinity CE using the Web Platform Installer.
Watch the original video at telerik.tv.
Download the Web Platform Installer and Sitefinity CE
1. Visit Sitefinity Community Edition in the Web App Gallery
2. Click the Install button – you will be prompted to install the Web Platform Installer
3. After the Web Platform Installer is installed, Sitefinity CE details will be displayed.
4. Click the Install button and then I Accept to confirm the download
5. After Sitefinity is downloaded confirm the site information
6. Click the Continue button and Sitefinity will be installed.
Launching the web application using the link shown above will open the Sitefinity CMS Startup in a new browser window. However, the project startup of Sitefinity requires file permissions that might not already be in place. To ensure project start-up will succeed, follow the instructions below.
Using IIS Manager to Configure Sitefinity CE
1. Click the Start Orb –> Control Panel –> System and Security –> Administrative Tools
2. Click the IIS Manager
3. Expand Sites and select the new SitefinityCommunityEdition application
4. Click the Authentication icon.
5. Ensure that Anonymous Authentication is Disabled
6. Ensure that ASP.NET Impersonation is Enabled
7. Ensure that Forms Authentication is Disabled.
8. Ensure that Windows Authentication is Enabled
The Authentication settings above will force the Sitefinity web site to use the credentials of the user account that is executing the browser. Below are instructions for launching Internet Explorer as Administrator. Because Sitefinity will be executing as Administrator, this will bypass the permission issues that might otherwise be encountered during Sitefinity project startup.
Launch the Sitefinity Project Startup
1. Right-click the IE browser icon and click Run As Administrator…
2. Go to the URL for the Sitefinity web site. By default this will be: http://localhost/sitefinitycommunityedition/
3. Agree to the Community Edition License details
4. Enter the database details
Customize the database information as needed. Note, however, that the SqlExpress option relies on User Instances. These User Instances are difficult to configure with IIS. SqlExpress can still be used, but it’s often easier to manually create the database using SQL Server Management Studio. See the Bullet Proof Guide to Installing Sitefinity for information about manually creating a SQL Express database.
5. Create an Administrator account
6. Click the I’m done button
Sitefinity will now redirect to the the Sitefinity Administration login. However, because Anonymous Access and Forms Authentication has been disabled in the steps above, this will likely generate an error. To successfully login to Sitefinity these settings must be rest.
Changing IIS Authentication for the Sitefinity Web Site
1. Click the Start Orb –> Control Panel –> System and Security –> Administrative Tools
2. Click the IIS Manager
3. Expand Sites and select the new SitefinityCommunityEdition application
4. Click the Authentication icon
8. Ensure that Anonymous Authentication is Enabled
9. Ensure that ASP.NET Impersonation is Disabled
10. Ensure that Forms Authentication is Enabled
11. Ensure that Windows Authentication is Disabled
Login to the Sitefinity Administration Web Site
The Sitefinity Administration page can be accessed by adding “/sitefinity” to the end of the URL.
1. Visit: http://localhost/sitefinitycommunityedition/sitefinity
2. Login using the Admin credentials that were chosen above
Welcome to Sitefinity! You can click Pages to begin adding pages. For more information about designing and customizing Sitefinity, please visit the Sitefinity Support Page.
