The easiest way to create a new EPiServer site is to use the Visual Studio extension: https://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/4ad95160-e72f-4355-b53e-0994d2958d3e
It will create a database and bunch of other files for you, create solution / project files, etc.

When you want to publish the website to test / staging / prod:
- You would have to manually backup / restore the database (first time only)
- Set up an empty website (and app pool) in IIS
- Publish the code using either Visual Studio or some continuous integration server (TeamCity, Bamboo, etc.)

Hi Sajid,

I, including most other developers I talk to tend to use Visual Studio to create a new project. The Visual Studio extension allows you to decide whether you are going to be using MVC or WebForms, and whether you want to install the Indexing Service whereas the Deployment Centre does not. However, the Deployment Centre allows you to specify IIS and Database settings, but of course these can be changed easily anyhow directly from within VS.

My advice would be to go with VS.

Regards,

Al

Thanks Dejan and Al. Been a while Al, hope you are well!

Ok I understand. The VS method allows of course the project type (MVC) to be selected, however no database. So it seems as though I have to do a bit of both to get it all working. This is a clean EPiServer 7.5 build and just trying to find the best way forward. Think I am going to do the following unless you guys and dolls have better advice.

1. Use deployment centre to give me a database and IIS
2. Build a basic core ES7.5 using VS
3. Copy over the config files from the website directory in (1)
4. Rebuild the solution

After that it is a case of building a clean startpage template and going from there.

Visual Studio Extension will create a localdb for you in App_Data folder.

You can use Sql Server Management studio to attach / detach database or backup / restore it, if you prefer to have it somewhere else.

With VS extension, you do get a fully functional website.

Deployment center will give you more control over DB and IIS, but it won't create a Visual Studio project / solution for you, set up nuget packages, etc.

You'll end up with more work in the end.

Thanks Dejan, that does make sense. I wasn't aware that it created the database!

When you set up a new website using EPiServer project templates, you may consider to use Empty MVC template instead of Alloy (MVC) / Alloy (WebForms).
For me, it's faster to set up the website that way and then "borrow" the code from Alloy than to clean the database.

When deleting the content types you don't need, you need to delete the content from edit mode first, and then the code from Visual Studio.
Otherwise you'll get exceptions / warnings saying 'the code for this content types does not exist'... or something like that :)