Rational Guide to installing MCMS 2002 Service Pack 2

Introduction
Content Management Server could never be considered Microsoft's finest installation hour! It's dependencies such as JVM, SQLDMO and IE Web Controls have always caused numerous headaches and gotchas from the RTM release through SP1a, which finally delivered a reasonable experience through a slipstreamed distribution.

Although Microsoft must be congratulated for shipping MCMS SP2 so soon after .NET 2.0 et all, they have really dropped the ball with respect to the installation experience. With many gotchas and manual tasks, along with the fact that the release is not a cumulative service pack, SP2 is a huge missed opportunity to ease the pain. Contributing to the poor experience is badly documented and confusing installation guidance.

This article provides a step by step installation for MCMS SP2, including the developer tools for Visual Studio 2005, SQL Server 2005, development gotchas and upgrading the WoodgroveNet sample site.

Base Platform
This article describes the setting up of a MCMS developer environment on Windows 2003 Server. For brevity, all components are installed on a single machine and to their default locations. The following installation order provides all necessary prerequisites, and it the optimal install order from a time perspective. We start with a base install of Windows Server 2003, with all Windows Updates installed. Two local user accounts are created:

• mssql - used to run all SQL Server services
• mcmssys - the MCMS System Account

Component Installation

1. Install the Application Server Role with ASP.NET (but not FrontPage Server Extensions (FPSE)
   Note: FPSE are not required for MCMS development despite the production documentation maintaining they are!
2. Use Add/Remove Programs... Windows Components to add Active Server Pages and Server Side Includes
   Note: The IIS Manager cannot be used to enable these, Add/Remove programs must be used or the MCMS installer will not recognise them!
3. Create a new Virtual Web Site to host the Server Configuration Application
4. Install SQL Server 2005
   1. The Database Engine and Workstation Components are all that's required.
   2. Use the MACHINENAME\mssql account for all services.
   3. Configure all three SQL Services to start automatically.
5. Configure SQL Server 2005
   1. Open Microsoft SQL Management Studio from the Start Menu.
   2. Connect to your Database Server using Windows Authentication.
   3. In the Object Explorer, right click the Database folder, and click New Database....
   4. In the Database name text box, enter MCMS.
      
   5. Click OK, and wait while the database is created.
   6. In the Object Explorer, expand the Security folder.
   7. Right click the Logins node, and click New Login....
   8. In the Login name text box, enter MACHINENAME\mcmssys.
   9. In the Default database combo box, select MCMS.
      
   10. Click the User Mapping page within the the Select a page pane.
   11. In the Users mapped to this login grid, click the Map check box for the MCMS database.
   12. In the Database role membership grid, click the following check boxes:
       • db_datareader
       • db_datawriter
       • db_ddladmin
         
   13. Click OK, and close SQL Management Studio.
6. Install Visual Studio 2003 ignoring the warning regarding FPSE
7. Install the Visual J# 2.0 Redistributable
8. Install IE Web Controls for MCMS
9. Install MCMS using the SP1a integrated installer (do not run the DCA upon completion)
10. Install Visual Studio 2005
11. Install MCMS SP2
12. Configure the Default Web Site to use ASP.NET 2.0 using IIS Manager
    
13. Run the Database Configuration Application to configure:
    1. ASP.NET Mode
    2. A Read/Write Entry Point on the Default Web Site
    3. The SCA on the site created in step three above
    4. The MACHINENAME\mcmssys account as the MCMS System Account
    5. Install the MCMS Schema to the MCMS Database created in step 4 above
    6. The currently logged on user as the Initial MCMS Administrator
14. Perform the Post SP2 Installation Steps
    Note: It is simpler to just copy the contents of the "c:\Program Files\Microsoft Content Management Server\DevTools\NewProjectWizards80\Visual Web Developer\" and "c:\Program Files\Microsoft Content Management Server\DevTools\NewItemWizards80\Visual Web Developer\" folders as no other templates are installed at this point. Make sure you don't forget to execute devenv /setup!
15. (Optional) Remove Visual Studio 2003

Creating a new MCMS Web Application
Because of the new project system in MCMS it is impreative the following sequence is followed in order to successfully create a new MCMS project. The wizards will not prevent you from configuring an invalid project.

• Open Visual Studio 2005
• Choose New from the File Menu, followed by Web Site
• In the New Web Site dialog, select the MCMS Web Application icon in the My Templates section
• Select HTTP in the Location List Box.
• Enter http://localhost/PROJECTNAME in the Location Text Box.
• Choose your desired Language in the Language List Box
• Click OK

Your project will be created, and a IIS CMS Virtual Directory created - and you will see the MCMS Tools in VS.NET. If you don't see the tools, you have accidentially left the location as FileSystem in the preceding sequence.
 

Ready to code!
You are now ready to start developing your MCMS application using SQL Server 2005 and ASP.NET 2.0 goodness such as navigation providers and master pages! The key change to get used to is that MCMS projects are now Visual Web Developer projects in Visual Studio 2005. Therefore you must use Build Web Site from the Build menu to build your applications. Whilst Local IIS projects are the only supported type, Visual Studio will still allow you to create a FileSystem based application - watch out for this easy mistake! As an aside, as MCMS apps are now Visual Web Developer projects, multiple languages in a project are supported!

Development Gotchas
There are a few gotchas with developing MCMS applications in Visual Studio 2005.

• The default MCMS Template File still sucks!
  Unfortunately Microsoft have yet again spurned the opportunity to fix the default Template file - it still includes comments in a ASP Script block, and other nasty markup. Of course you can always edit this template as before to fix it or create your own NewItem file.
• Template CodeFile attribute
  A common practice is to store your Template files in a subfolder. If you use the Add New Item command to add a new MCMS Template file to a subfolder, it's CodeFile attribute will be incorrect. This will prevent you being able to Build your Web Site. To Fix this you will need to manually alter the CodeFile attribute of the Page directive.
  e.g. Change CodeFile="~/Test.aspx.cs" to CodeFile="~/Templates/Test.aspx.cs"
• Templates cannot resolve the cms: Tag Prefix
  Oops!! This won't effect build but sure is annoying as you cannot use Intellisense! The problem goes away once you add a placeholder to the template, which adds a correct Register directive - you can then delete the erronous one in the original template code.

Known Issue with Visual Studio.NET 2003
There is a known issue with the Developer Tools for VS.NET 2003 being unavailable after installing SP2. If the above procedure is followed this issue is not present, and MCMS applications can continue to be developed with VS.NET 2003. Note: Stefan mentions that even with the above procedure the VS.NET 2003 developer tools can still go AWOL. However, I've never encountered this issue.

Upgrading the WoodgroveNet Sample site

1. Install the WoodgroveNet Sample site, choosing to import sample data using credentials of the currently logged on user.
2. Using Windows Explorer, navigate to C:\Program Files\Microsoft Content Management Server\Sample Data\WoodgroveNet
3. Right click the WoodgroveNet.sln file and choose Open With, followed by Microsoft Visual Studio Version Selector
4. On the Welcome to the Visual Studio Conversion Wizard page, click Next
5. (Optional) On the Choose Whether To Create a Backup page, select Yes, and click Next
6. On the Ready to Convert page, click Finish
7. On the Conversion Complete page, select the Show the conversion log when the wizard is closed checkbox, and click Close
8. You can review the Conversion Report for issues with the upgrade, in the case of WoodgroveNet these are mainly due to resource files.
9. Resolve the issues, and choose Build Web Site from the Build menu.

Conclusion
Despite the pain and numerous gotchas, it's definately worth moving to MCMS SP2. Even if you are not interested in SQL 2005 support, or using ASP.NET 2.0 features such as Master Pages, there are 59 new fixes in this Service Pack. Happy development!