Installing Composite on Windows XP

Developers can install Composite locally on their Windows XP machines and use the Composite Site Manager to create multiple sites locally. Having a local version of Composite installed greatly enhances the debugging possibilities, and is a great help when developing ASP.NET functionality for Composite.

To install Composite, complete the following steps:

1. Ensure that you have Internet Information Server (IIS) installed on your Windows XP machine – if not, install it. Ensure that the IIS Service is running.
2. Execute the Composite installer package (distributed as a MSI file) and complete the installation.

Once Composite is installed, you can create a new Composite site by executing the following steps:

1. Start the “Composite Site Manager” – you can browse to the program by selecting Start | All Programs | Composite Netsystems | Composite
2. Select the “Create new site” option, and click “Next >”
3. Complete the wizard.
4. Once the site has been successfully created, launch the IIS Manager. You can do this by right-clicking the “My Computer” icon and select “Manage”.
5. Locate the IIS site you just created (located under “Services and Applications”, “Internet Information Services”)
6. Start the site. This step might require that you stop the existing running site.
7. Ensure that the "root" and "Administration" applications on the site both support authentication (select "Properties", "Directory Security", "Authentication and access control", "Edit...").
8. If the site you have created is displayed with an “error icon”, restart the IIS Service.

At this point you should be able to launch the Composite site using http://localhost/ and the administrative module using http://localhost/administration

Using the Composite Site Manager you can create multiple sites and easily delete existing sites.

Depending on your security settings, having XP SP2 installed etc., you can experience problems when launching the administrative module or editing css files using the css editor. If this is the case, edit the file /Administration/web.config, and change the value identity impersonate=”false” to “true”.

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