Orchard Web Development Using WebMatrix IDE from Microsoft

If you are interested in developing Orchard Websites but don't have Visual Studio, try the WebMatrix IDE from Microsoft. WebMatrix is a free web development tool from Microsoft that includes a lot of features needed to develop small websites. It is essentially a slimmed down web development IDE that you can use for HTML and CSS Editing, managing the new and free SQL Server Compact Edition database, and running your web pages with IIS Express. If you are a hobbyist web developer, learning to develop small websites, or just don't need all the features of Visual Studio, I highly recommend you download and install WebMatrix using the Microsoft Web Platform Installer.

After you have installed WebMatrix from the Web Platform Installer, go ahead and also download and install Orchard CMS from the Web Platform Installer, too.

This is by far the easiest way to install Orchard, but once you have been developing with Orchard for awhile, you will prefer to download the full source code or runtime files from Orchard.CodePlex.com. As you develop Orchard Websites you will find that having numerous versions of Orchard running on your development PC and Server will be necessary to adequately test and run your custom Orchard Modules and Themes. If nothing else you will want a test Orchard Website that you can keep resetting to factory default to test the installation and migration of your Orchard Modules.

After you have installed both WebMatrix and Orchard CMS, go ahead an open the directory where you installed Orchard using WebMatrix. From there you can start to view the Orchard Source Code, run Orchard, and begin to get comfortable with ASP.NET MVC, Razor, and the host of technologies used by Orchard.

If you plan to develop Orchard Modules in any complexity, you will probably want to use Visual Studio 2010, but for now, get your feet wet designing and developing Orchard Websites with the free WebMatrix Development Tool from Microsoft.