To start developing with Sitecore Experience Platform (XP), we will consider the simplest and most convenient approach of installing Sitecore using its setup program. You can find different Sitecore versions to download at https://goo.gl/kelRnC, where you can choose the required Sitecore Experience Platform version and download the Sitecore web application installer, which provides you with an easy EXE-based Sitecore setup. For further help on the installation, you can download the Sitecore installation guide from https://goo.gl/b4cnAQ, which describes the prerequisites and hardware and software requirements for a Sitecore XP host and client computers. It also provides a step-by-step guide on installing Sitecore with different options.
Before installing Sitecore, ensure that your browsers, IIS, .NET Framework, and SQL server meet Sitecore's recommended requirements. You can check this compatibility table at https://goo.gl/4kkCHe. Also, you must determine some configuration values for system components, as shown in the following table:
Once the setup is complete, launch Sitecore using the hostname that we used, that is, http://sitecorecookbook
/
. After the Sitecore installation, you will find three directories in the installation path: Website
, Data
, and Databases
. Here, Website
is the web root of the Sitecore application. You can read more about the Sitecore System Components installed by the web application installer at https://goo.gl/0JKatR.