Create projects

After you have Sitefinity CMS, you can create your own Sitefinity CMS projects, using Sitefinity CMS Project Manager.

You can open the Sitefinity CMS Project Manager from your Windows Start menu. You can see a list of all your projects, along with details such as location, version, creation date, and so on. For more information, see Work with Sitefinity CMS Project Manager.

NOTE: Keep in mind that when creating projects with the Project Manager, you need to manually install Roslyn. For more information, see Optimize website startup.

The file encoding standard used by default in Sitefinity's Project Manager is given below:

• Sitefinity CMS release package (Project Manager) before version 8.0: ASCII
• Sitefinity CMS release package (Project Manager) including and after version 8.0: UTF-16

The first time you create a project, you must complete the license installation procedure. For every additional project, you must choose from already installed licenses or install a new license. If you have already created projects with a previous Sitefinity CMS version, you must first Upgrade them after which the License activation screen appears automatically when you start the project.

You can use Sitefinity CMS in the following ways:

• Purchase a Sitefinity CMS license for one of the Sitefinity CMS editions.
  You can use a licensed Sitefinity CMS edition with and without having registered a domain. If you do not have a domain yet, you can still purchase a license and add your domain later via your Sitefinity account. A licensed version without a registered domain can run online but with a trial message and a limitation on the number of content items you can create until you register a domain. When you register a domain, the trial message is removed and the limitation to the content items is according to your edition.
  If you have registered a domain, but you want to change it, contact Sitefinity CMS Sales department.
• Use a free trial version for any of the editions.
  Sitefinity CMS trial versions are for evaluation purposes only. You can run a trial only on local host. After the trial expires, the website redirects to the Sitefinity CMS Activate a license page.

For more information about Sitefinity CMS editions, see Sitefinity CMS license comparison.