Kooboo CMS Installation Guide

Summary

I recently started evaluating Kooboo for potential use where I work to replace our existing CMS. We do a lot of website development in MVC.Net so Kooboo seemed like a good fit for our environment and existing skill set. A lot of the documentation and examples they currently have are a little hard to follow and I found just getting the code and opening it in Visual Studio using their instructions was a bit difficult so here's the easiest way to get started.

Installing Kooboo the easy way

If you're trying to get started with Kooboo CMS here is the easiest way to download and install it with all of it's dependencies:

1. Download and install the latest version of WebMatrix (http://www.microsoft.com/web/webmatrix/).
2. After installation is complete open WebMatrix and select "New" -> "App Gallery".
3. Select the CMS category on the left-hand side or just type in Kooboo in the search input at the top.
4. Find Kooboo CMS in the list, select it, enter a site name in the input at the bottom and press Next.
5. You'll have to agree to the EULA to start the download and install.
6. Once it's finished you will see the source code in WebMatrix and it should start the Kooboo website in your default browser.
7. You can now log in using the default UserName: admin and Password: admin.

Now that you have the code and a working installation of Kooboo CMS you'll probably want to open it up in Visual Studio:

1. In WebMatrix right click on the root of the website and select "Show in File Explorer".
2. Start Visual Studio and select "File" -> "Open Web Site..." or (Shift + Alt + O).
3. Copy and paste the path from File Explorer or navigate to it and click the Open button.
4. You can now build and run the website from within Visual Studio.

Note: The current version as of writing this has an error which will come up when you try to build and run from Visual Studio:

'Kooboo.CMS.Web.Areas.Sites.Models.PagePublishViewModel' does not contain a definition for 'FullName' and no extension method 'FullName' accepting a first argument of type 'Kooboo.CMS.Web.Areas.Sites.Models.PagePublishViewModel' could be found (are you missing a using directive or an assembly reference?)

You can safely delete or comment out the offending code in "~/Areas/Sites/Views/Page/Publish.cshml" and continue:

@{
    var page = new Kooboo.CMS.Sites.Models.Page(Kooboo.CMS.Sites.Models.Site.Current,Model.FullName);
}
@if (ServiceFactory.PageManager.HasDraft(page))
{
    @Html.EditorFor(m => m.PublishDraft, new { @class = "medium draft" })
}

Now you can head over the to download page on Kooboo.CodePlex.com to get the Visual Studio templates for Modules (Kooboo.CMS.ModuleArea.vsi) and Plug-Ins (Kooboo.CMS.PluginTemplate.vsi).

References

http://www.kooboo.com/docs/Kooboo-CMS/Installation-guide-1
http://kooboo.codeplex.com/
http://www.microsoft.com/web/gallery/kooboocms.aspx
http://www.iis.net/learn/develop/installingpublishing-apps-with-webmatrix/kooboo-cms-faq