If, like me you've developed an EPiServer site using their new Visual Studio 2005 Project you may have become frustrated when coming to install it on your Live server using EPiServer Manager. For those of you that haven't, i'm referring to the bit of the install where it asks you which Module you want to install. Module? What's a Module? If you don't select one you need to install the demo site - which no one wants to do when they've just spent time creating their real site in a development environment.

After a bit of digging (i couldn't find any info on EPiServer's site) i worked out that a Module was simply a zip file! So i Zipped up my ASP_Theme folder, all my user controls, pages and language files (i left the web.config out) and copied it to the server. Then at the end of install through EPiServer Manager I chose "install module" and selected my zip - then hey presto it installed my developed site!

The next annoyance to overcome was the "now you must install basic content" option ( /admin/setup.aspx) which will only let you select to install the demo site's data... after more digging i found that this is simple too. Login to the admin page of your development site and export all data (pages types, tabs, categories etc etc) Then save the export file (give it a meaningful name) into "[WEBSITE]\Util\setup\" folder (you will probably need to create the folder) then refresh the setup page - and hey presto again - you'll now have the option to install your data rather than the demo!

In fact i'd recommend adding the .episerverdata created via the export tool to your original zip file to make the process even more streamlined.

Out of interest does anyone know how to disable the setup.aspx page from appearing? until you've ran it you can't see your page as IIS serves the setup.aspx instead (even if you've restored a database or pointed it to an exiting one)