Sitecore SXA 1.9 Installation Guide for Development Machine

Sitecore Experience Accelerator (SXA) 1.9 was released on 22nd July 2019 together with Sitecore 9.2. In this post I will walk you through really quick installation of this version of SXA for your development machine. This is a follow up blog post to my installation guides for Sitecore 9.2 – using SIF or using SIA.

 

TL;DR

If you have installed SXA before, just download Sitecore Powershell Extensions (SPE) version 5.0 and also SXA 1.9 for Sitecore 9.2 from this link. Install these installation packages through Sitecore. Then add SXA Solr cores to Solr, populate schemas and rebuild newly created indexes (follow chapters 3c) – 3e)). That’s it! Simple as that!

For rest of you let’s get started!

1) SXA 1.9 Prerequisites

1a) Sitecore

These versions of Sitecore are supported:

• Sitecore 9.1 Update 1
• Sitecore 9.2 Initial Release (I have chosen this one)

1b) Sitecore Powershell Extensions (SPE)

These versions of SPE are supported:

• Sitecore PowerShell Extensions 5.0 for Sitecore 9.1 update 1
• Sitecore PowerShell Extensions 5.0 for Sitecore 9.2 (I have chosen this one)

 

2) Installation preparation

2a) Download SPE installation package

Open SXA 1.9 Download Page and based on your Sitecore version, choose your package and download:

I have chosen one for Sitecore 9.2.

Add prefix “01 ” to filename and rename downloaded file to “01 Sitecore PowerShell Extensions-5.0 for 9.2.zip”. Renaming is not needed but I am using this practice to know precise order for installing packages based on file name.

2b) Download SXA installation package

If you are planning to install SXA 1.9 on Sitecore 9.2 on dev machine, click directly on this link to download installation package straight ahead or open https://dev.sitecore.net/Downloads/Sitecore_Experience_Accelerator/19/Sitecore_Experience_Accelerator_190.aspx and download suitable file based on your Sitecore version 9.1 / 9.2 (login is needed for download):

01 Download first file from the list if you are using Sitecore 9.1 Update 1.

Rename downloaded file to “02 Sitecore Experience Accelerator 1.9.0 rev. 190528 for 9.2.zip”. Renaming is not needed but I am using this practice to know precise order for installing packages from file name.

You should end up with this download folder:

2c) Optional step – Download installation guide

If you are following this blog post, you actually don’t need to download official installation guide but just in case 🙂 Open https://dev.sitecore.net/Downloads/Sitecore_Experience_Accelerator/19/Sitecore_Experience_Accelerator_190.aspx and download highlighted file manually:

3) SXA 1.9 Installation

3a) Install SPE 5.0

From Launchpad, open Control Panel:

Click on Install a package in Administration section:

Upload both files downloaded in chapter 2) by clicking on Upload package button, choosing both files on next screen and click on Next button:

Choose first package:

Click through the wizard and wait until the package is installed.

 

3b) Install SXA 1.9

From Launchpad open Control Panel or just stay in Control Panel screen:

Click on Install a package in Administration section:

This time just choose the second package:

Click through the wizard and wait until installation is finished.

On the last screen also check “Restart the Sitecore server” and click Close:

3c) Configure SXA Solr cores

Last step of installation is to add two SXA specific Solr cores.

Navigate to your Solr folder and copy two times “{YourSitecoreInstanceName}_master_index” folder. If you have followed my Installation Guide for Solr 7.5, it should be located under “C:\solr75\solr-7.5.0\server\solr”:

Rename newly copied folders to “{YourSitecoreInstanceName}_sxa_master_index” and “{YourSitecoreInstanceName}_sxa_web_index”:

Navigate to both newly created folders and remove data subfolder and core.properties file as highlighted here:

At the end you should leave only conf subfolder under both “{YourSitecoreInstanceName}_sxa_master_index” and “{YourSitecoreInstanceName}_sxa_web_index” folders like this:

Open solr admin ui in your browser. If you have followed my Installation Guide for Solr 7.5, URL is https://solr75:8750/solr/ .

Click on Core Admin (1) in left menu and then click on Add Core (2) button with green plus as shown below. Specify “{YourSitecoreInstanceName}_sxa_master_index” in name and instanceDir fields (3) and hit Add Core button (4). Do the same also for {YourSitecoreInstanceName}_sxa_web_index:

Open “C:\inetpub\wwwroot\sc92sc.dev.local\App_Config\Modules\SXA\z.Foundation.Overrides\Sitecore.XA.Foundation.Search.Solr.config” file (path can vary based on your installation folder) in your text editor and change core parameters highlighted below to your newly created cores in Solr to each index accordingly (mind highlighted values for each master/web index):

 

Best is of course to create patch config file, not to edit files directly 😉

3d) Populate Solr Managed Schema for SXA indexes

From Launchpad, open Control Panel:

Open Populate Solr Managed Schema (1) from Indexing section, select only SXA related indexes highlighted below (2) and click Populate button (3):

This is desired outcome:

 

3e) Rebuild SXA indexes

From Launchpad, open Control Panel:

Open Indexing Manager (1) from Indexing section, select only SXA related indexes highlighted below (2) and click Rebuild button (3):

This is the desired outcome:

That’s it!

If you are thinking what to do next with SXA, create tenant and site and start content editing with SXAjust a minute after installation 🙂 Thanks to Barend Emmerzaal this could be trivial task for you:

 

Also check his blog post with guideline about structure of sites and tenants: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/sitecore-experience-accelerator-sxa-site-structure-guide-emmerzaal/

You can find my other blog posts about sxa here.

Cheers!

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Used sources:

• SXA 1.9 Download page
• Installation Guide