Complete Newbie!

Hi I've been landed with a  NopCommerce site source code and a backup of a database. And I'm drowning!
I've openen it Visual Studio (as per one youtube vise suggests) and for the life of me I haven't been able to get any further,  I've tried double clicking the Nop.Web label in the hope that everything will spring into life, but nada. I'm assuming that I need to connect these files to a dbase (I've seen the wizard on other installations), but nothing  I've tried works. I then want of sourse to get the site online. Any help or even a pointer to a guide or tutorial would be a great help.
Thanks in advance, Joe

Are you working with a fresh nopCommerce source code ?

Hi have a folder with these files:

I have put the files through Visul Studio and the output is

Do you know the major release version of the source code?

I would install SQL Server Express instance locally on your dev box (if you don't have already). and also install SSMS to manage the instance. Connect to local SQL express, create a new blank/empty database. Also create a 2nd blank db (with your database name) and restore your SQL backup  file into it.

in source code, look for file datasettings.json in src\Presentation\Nop.Web\App_Data  - if its there, MOVE it out of the way (to desktop maybe)

In VS compile and run/debug the source code it should reach the 'Install' page. Configure the install page to configure a new local nopCommerce instance/db (using the blank/empty db above). After some time, new instance should be ready.

now look again in src\Presentation\Nop.Web\App_Data  - a new datasettings.json will have been created. Modify the connection string to point to your restored db. Run/debug again. see if it will run the expected store.

Once you get to this point, you can look to publish to IIS which requires all the caveats for hosting (theres a best practices doc for this somewhere..)













BilkoJoe wrote:

A quick way to determine your nopCommerce version is to open up one of the \Plugins subfolders and open file - either a Description.txt (prior to 4.0) or plugin.json.  In the file will be a line:
SupportedVersions: ...