Visual Studio

I installed nopCommerce on a dedicated server of which I have full control.  I did not use Visual Studio to install and launch the store, I did it manually and I did not use the source code file.

Am I now stuck as to making big edits?  Can I load the installed store into Visual Studio somehow so I can modify source code or am I out of luck because I never installed the source files to begin with?

This is a new store that I have been working on but is not yet full of inventory or in production.  If I have gone too far and need to reinstall and start over launching through Visual Studio, so be it - but i'd really like to make some changes without doing all of that work.

If your original install is a fresh, unmodified install without source, then nothing stops you from modifying from now onward.

All you need to do is:

1) Customize the features
2) Compile the files
3) Replace any files in your current store

You will only lose features IF say, someone has modified the source, but only handed to you the compiled version. Then you cannot add new feature without losing the old one.

I hope I explains good enough? :)

Would that require downloading the source files and somehow integrating them with my current files?

You don't need to 'integrate'. You just need to replace the files modified. :)

av8trswife wrote:
If you made any changes to the .cshtml files, then yes, you would need to integrate that into your local copy of source code version.  The database is another matter.  If you did a lot of "configuration" in Admin, and you want all those changes (behavior) in your local copy, then backup the database, and restore it to your local SQL Server.  But do note that any configuration changes you make locally would then need to also be made in the hosted production site  (or backup your local database and restore to the host).