How do I create a new development environment for a Sitecore project already in production?

My coworker and I are taking over a Sitecore project that was built by s开发者_开发技巧ome other entity and is currently in production. What's the process for creating a local development environment so we can begin making changes?

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The best approach is to completely duplicate everything from prod. That usually involves:

• Go on the prod server and zip up the site's root. The IIS website will point to a "website" folder. In addition, you'll want the site's "data" folder, which is usually one folder above the "website" so its not web-accessible. The data folder contains the license, logs, etc.
• In SQL management stuido, make a backup of the Core, Master, and Web databases for the site. They're listed in the /Website/App_Config/ConnectionStrings.config file. There may be more databases for Sitecore modules that you need
• Pull the site zip and databases locally and re-configure them on your local machine. Some key setting you'll need to update your local environment are
  • Settings in the /Website/App_Config/ConnectionStrings.config for local data sources
  • The web.config's dataFolder setting which maps the path on the file system to the data folder

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Once you get everything duplicated locally(following Mark's steps ) I usually remove the web database reference from the web.config and change all references of "web" to "master". It's easier to develop this way as sitecore is running in live mode and you don't have to worry about publishing.

My usually folder structure for a sitecore project is

• sampleproject

  • lib

    • sitecore - which contains all the sitecore sold

  • src

    • data - datafolder stuff goes here

    • website

On post build I copy all the dlls from /lib/sitecore to the bin folder.