2. Setup

This section deals with installing Kartris and doing some basic configuration.

There are two main scenarios for setup – local and remote. 'Local' means installation on a computer you have full access to such as your desktop or laptop computer, or a server if you have full admin rights. 'Remote' means a computer you can only access via FTP and MS SQL.

2.1. Prerequisites

You must have the following software installed in order to run Kartris.

IIS7.x (Windows Server 2008 or Vista) or IIS8 (Windows Server 2012 or Windows 8 or above)
MS SQL 2008 R2 Express or above (available free from Microsoft's web site) or one of the full versions of MS SQL 2008 or above
ASP.NET 4.6+

For best performance, a modern browser such as Firefox, Chrome, Safari or Edge for the back end. The front end still supports versions of Internet Explorer still under support.

2.2. NuGet

NuGet is a Microsoft run service that allows you to import packages from an online repository, directly into Visual Studio. This is probably the easiest way to get hold of the latest Kartris code to set up a new local version for development.

2.2.1. Setup a new web project in Visual Studio

Select Installed > Visual Basic > Web > Previous Versions from the left hand panel.

Then choose ASP.NET Empty Web Site in the main content area, and choose a name and location for your project. The version of the framework isn't so important, as that should be set later when we pull the files in. But you must have at least .NET 4.6 installed.

Next, remove any files and folders that Visual Studio 'helpfully' adds to the web site, so it really is empty.

2.2.2. Install from Nuget

Select Tools > NuGet Package Manager > Manage NuGet Packages for Solution.

Click the 'Browse' link/tab, then type 'Kartris' in the search box. You should find the Kartris package.

Click to select this, then check the box to install to the project you've just set up. Click the Install button.

Visual Studio will show you a list of dependencies. Click OK to proceed with the installation. You will also need to approve some licenses for dependencies. The required Kartris files will then be downloaded to your web.

2.2.3. Setup routine

In Visual Studio, click to run the web site. You will get a warning that there were errors (this is because we don't yet have a database). Click YES to run the last successful build. You should see the setup routine in your web browser.

Follow the steps through. You will get to a step that lets you setup a database. Specify the path to your SQL Server, choose a database name and select that this is a new database, and Kartris can create and populate this for you. The checkbox to add demo data adds a few sample products and orders, which make it easier to test the basic features, and can easily be deleted later.

Installing the database can take a few minutes. Once done, you should see the admin account details that the setup routine created for you. We suggest you make a note of these now somewhere safe. You can change the password later if you wish, from within the Kartris back end.

Once you get to the end of the setup process, you should see two links, to access the front and back ends of Kartris.

The setup routine will make changes to the web.config file, to include the connection string to the new database and some other minor changs.

2.3. Manual installation

2.3.1. Download the software

Our site downloads page has links to download the latest zip:

https://www.kartris.com/t-Downloads.aspx

The software itself comes as a zipped file.

If you want to obtain the very latest up-to-date code, you can go to the source repository on Github (this may contain development code, unfinished work, bugs and other issues, so the version zips on our downloads page are strongly recommended).

https://github.com/cactusoft/kartris

Don't forget to unblock any zip files you download before you unzip them. More information...

2.3.2. Installing

2.3.2.1. On IIS 7.5+

The process on IIS7 and earlier will be similar, the main difference being that the web site will run as a specific Windows user rather than an app pool identity. So you will need to add that user to your SQL Server, and create Windows permissions for it.

Firstly, you must have Windows, IIS and SQL Server installed. This example is using Windows 8.1 and SQL Server 2008 R2. But the process will be similar for other versions of Windows with IIS7 or above.

Step 1 - Find where your IIS web root folder is and add a new folder into it. If you're not sure where it is, go to IIS, right click the Default Web Site and select 'explore'. The default location is normally C:\inetpub\wwwroot, but you can move this to another location for disk space reasons, or locate it into your Dropbox if you want files to be backed up to the cloud.

Step 2 - Within windows explorer, add a new folder into your web root. We tend to use names that help identify the version of Kartris and the name of the customer or site, to make it easier to tell these things at a glance later.

Step 3 - Back in IIS, refresh the sites and you should see the new folder within 'sites'. Right click this, and select 'Convert to Application'. A dialogue pops up. Click the 'Select' button and choose the ASP.NET 4.0 or ASP.NET 4.5 application pool. Then Ok everything. You should see the folder 'k26001_mytestweb' icon change. The web is now set up ready for our files, which will come a bit later.

Step 4 - We need to create a new database for our site. Open up SQL Management Studio and connect. If you are using SQL Express, the default location will be localhost\sqlexpress. Right click on the 'Databases' folder and select 'New Database'. Name your database and save - again, we're going to call it 'k26001_mytestweb' (the name does not have to match your web, but it's much easier to tie up sites to their respective databases later if it does).

Step 5 - We need to create the right permissions to allow our web to work with this database. This part is all about identifying which Windows user your web runs as, and giving this user permissions. Because we set the site up using the defaults, it should be running as an app pool identify user called 'IIS APPPOOL\.net v4.5. Remember the application pool we selected in step 2 above was called '.net v4.5' - the database user you need will be called 'IIS APPPOOL\[application pool name]'.

To find users on this database, open up the 'Security' folder in SQL Management Studio and then 'Logins'. If you don't see 'IIS APPPOOL\.net v4.5' (or whatever the name of your app pool is), then you need to add it. If you see the user there already, you can skip to the next step. Otherwise, right click on 'Logins' and type the name of the app pool into the dialogue, then 'Search'. Another window appeals, and you need to enter 'IIS APPPOOL\.net v4.5' again into the box here. When you click 'Check names' you should see the text change, hiding the IIS APPPOOL part. This indicates that it is a valid user. OK everything, and this new user should now appear under 'Logins' in the treeview.

Step 6 - We need to map this database to this user. Right click on the 'IIS APPPOOL\.net v4.5' user and select 'Properties'. On the dialogue that pops up, select 'User Mapping'. Check the box by the 'k26001_mytestweb' database and Ok to save. This means that this user is now mapped to this database.

Step 7 - Now we have the user mapped to this database, we need to give him permissions. Go to k26001_mytestweb > Security > Logins and then right click on the app pool user. In the popup, select 'db_owner' in the 'Database role membership field'. Then OK.

Step 8 - Now we are all set to copy in the Kartris files. Download the latest zip, and ensure you unblock it (see here for more info). Open it up and copy the contents of the Kartris folder into the 'k26001_mytestweb' folder. Your folder should look like this:

Step 9 - The final configuration step is to give the web site user full control permissions. This is so the web site can write, modify and delete files, which is essential as you upload product images, make changes to payment systems. It also means that the install routine can rewrite the web.config file itself, which makes things a bit easier.

To do this, find the web root in Windows explorer, right click the k26001_mywebsite folder, and select 'properties', then the 'security' tab.

Click the 'Edit...' button, then 'Add...' and enter 'IIS APPPOOL\.net v4.5'. Ok this, and the user '.NET v4.5' should appear in the list.

Finally, select this user in the list and give it full 'allow' permissions, and then OK everything.

Step 10 - You now have the database and web set up with full permissions, and should be ready to start the installer. Call up the web site in a browser - the URL will be http://localhost/k26001_mytestweb/.