Hey folks, if you have not heard about Sifon for Sitecore - you must definitely check this out. It is a definite swiss army knife for local Sitecore development and you'd really like to learn why.
But here's a demo of how straightforward Sitecore installation is using the latest Sifon 1.3.3 release - you don't need to do anything at all rather than click a few buttons from UI. Below are the new features for this version:
- added support for 10.3 version of the platform (downloads, Solr, dependencies, etc.)
- added support for XM topology starting from 10.3
- added SQL Server smooth installation in a single click
- added convenient defaults so that you don't need typing at all, would you prefer the default setting
- tested well on Windows 11
This tool is a gem for marketers, business analysts, and other non-developer groups of people who may need to set up Sitecore on their local machines but do not want to mess up with Docker and containers. Single-click smooth installation is what they want!
The installation itself is simple - either downloading the installer from the official website or even easier from Chocolatey gallery by this command:
cinst sifon
This 15-minute-long video shows it all in action - installing Sifon, then downloading and installing Solr, SQL Server, and Sitecore XP 10.3 with Publishing Service 7.0, SXA 10.3, and even Horizon from 10.2 - it works with 10.3 perfectly well, and installs in a single click, as everything else with Sifon:
Upon completion, Sifon will also automatically set up and activate the profile for the newly installed Sitecore instance (in the above image it is name xp and is also shown in the window title). Profiles are used to identify the active environment for the rest of Sifon functionality and plugins to operate against. One can easily switch active profiles from the dropdown and Profile editor menu.
I really hope this wonderful tool saves you lots of time and effort. Thanks for watching!
Update: occasionally, some rare systems report errors upon prerequisites installation. The error message prompts about being unable to identify and run AppPool task and is caused by the mandatory system restart requirement from IIS. For such systems, after the restart and re-running Sifon will work as expected. As an alternative, you may run the below command and restart your computer prior to using Sifon to ensure a smooth installation experience:
Enable-WindowsOptionalFeature -Online -FeatureName "IIS-WebServerManagementTools" -All