Themes in Orchard hosted in Azure - azure

I've been setting up Orchard 1.8 in an Azure Cloud Service. I've got it working, but I'm now confused as to how to use it.
Installing themes via the gallery fails silently. The devs say this is because Orchard on Azure doesn't support the theme gallery, and suggest adding new themes to the project and uploading a new package (https://orchard.codeplex.com/discussions/453688). Ignoring that this requires any designers that want to make minor CSS changes now need Visual Studio, access to the entire source code, and then wait through a 20 minute deploy, this just doesn't seem possible.
This post explains how the Azure emulator doesn't work with Orchard. So now I'm confused; what is the expected workflow for a brand new Orchard site hosted on Azure if I can't make changes to the site in production or staging but cannot run it locally either. I'm aware I could run it without the Azure emulator on regular IIS but that seems to be too far removed from the production environment to be a good test.
I was drawn to Orchard originally because it had great documentation and supports MVC Web API, but this seems so fundamental that now I'm not so sure. I feel like every time something goes wrong they'll always be doubt whether it's working as designed or if there is an Azure idiosyncrasy going on.
I'd love to hear from anyone who's had an Orchard site from scratch in Azure, I'm hoping I've just missed something simple with this.
Thanks,
Tom

You should never install modules or themes on a production server. Instead, install those on your dev machine, build the package and then deploy. If you don't want to deal with the heaviness of cloud services, don't use cloud services. Azure Web Sites are about a million times easier to use, and they work great. They allow for what you're asking for.

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I've an application which is deployed. I'd created simple get fetch services on cloud in a project and have deployed it. Unfortunately in confusion b/w the projects, I deleted the project. I can access the web service by fetching through urls but couldn't get the source code. Any help?
At the moment it's only possible to download Java, Python, PHP and Go application's source code.
What I can recommend you is to submit a Feature Request through this link asking for this feature also for Node.js. Also you may consider using Cloud Source Repositories, which is free and can help you mitigate this kind of issues in the future.

How would I go about publishing Orchard.Core so I could deploy to a web host?

In Orchard 1.x, my setup was the following:
Cloned Orchard 1.x and kept it clean (unedited) and updated on my local repo.
Publish that clone of Orchard 1.x to another local repo that I would keep clean and update from the clone above as necessary.
Create multiple clones for different landlord/tenant sites of the Publish of Orchard 1.x, and set each up remotely in separate Bitbucket repositories. These would have staging/production branches.
The above is just a simplistic version of what I actually did.
With Orchard.Core, since it's currently in Beta 2 (or 3, I think), documentation is still being created. In some instances of documentation, I get the impression I can do a similar thing as the directions are to download the source and reference the appropriate NuGet packages. But I don't see much of anything specific about publish/deploy (except some information from blog posts from about a year ago - which is likely stale).
On the other hand, I see some blog posts mentioning that all you really need to do is reference the NuGet packages to run a site locally, but there is no further insight into the publish/deploy scenario. I can infer that maybe just publishing that might be sufficient, but I am not sure.
As it's still in beta, I have no intention of pushing Orchard.Core out on a live site. I just want to start preparing for when 2.0 arrives. I can test out locally whether or not what I did with Orchard 1.x will work with Orchard.Core, but I want to make sure I do it correctly. Just concerned I might be missing something.
Can anyone confirm the publish/deploy steps for Orchard.Core currently? Any insight is appreciated.
Yes, you can publish the application.
Then, if you are on Windows and want to host it on IIS, you will need install the .NET Core Framework and the ANCM (ASP.NET Core hosting module).
In IIS, create a site pointing to the publish folder, with an application pool with 'No Managed Code' for '.NET CLR version' and 'Integrated' for 'Managed Pipeline Mode'.

Setting up Umbraco project with nuget in vs 2012 error

I'm trying to set up a development project in vs 2012 with nuget and Umbraco. I am aware of the several recipe's, amongst the better Umbraco for beginners: Setup Umbraco on localhost together with VS 2012 and uSiteBuilder.
When I am using this procedure I install Umbraco with nuget and build it without problems, but when I hit F5 I get the same error continously: "Could not load type Umbraco.Web.UmbracoApplication" which global.asax inherits from!
What is wrong, what am I missing here...? Thanks in advance /Finn
A bit late, but I had the same problem and the reason for that are missing dll's. Referenced libraries weren't copied to bin folder.
It is not the best or easiest way of setting the project up.
Instead of creating a WebForm project, create an empty MVC4 project and then install the Umbraco CMS from NuGet. This way you won't have to remove anything. It will also by default use IIS Express, so there is no need to change the project properties.
You don't even have to use the NuGet console. You can use the package manager and just search for Umbraco.
Well it seems like an unprofessional oversight from my point! I just forgot to give security access to the relevant folders to network service.
You might have to build and clean the solution a couple of times if you get exposed to the YSOD error: "Cannot create/shadow copy 'filename' when that file already exists" when you hit F5! This error might occur if you hit F5 too quickly after a build, in this case asp.net is probably not finished with whatever it has to complete, and the file is locked.
#Digbyswift: I do not agree with you! Whether you set up your project as an MVC or Webforms application, it doesn't matter. What is important though, is that you use empty applications, as if you don't there will probably be some references/dependencies that you have to delete in order to get the application running! And default server will be the vs dev server, which in my opinion is by far the best and easiest to use untill you are ready to deploy your application. I agree thouhg that using the package-manager from visual studio is the easiest way to come around installing Umbraco.
Following these steps and hints you should use no more than a couple of minutes from installing Umbraco untill you have the wellcome screen and is ready to set up db etc...
Cheers Finn...

What setup are people going with for Orchard CMS and multiple sites?

I've just joined the Orchard CMS movement, but I'm having some major meltdowns about the setup. Their site has too much documentation about what I'm not looking for and it's making it tough to figure this out.
I plan to run about 15 brand new websites on one web/sql server and I have a separate development machine. I plan to make some custom themes and modules to suite each website's common and specific needs. I want to use IIS 7 and MS-SQL 2008 on the production server.
So, should I:
Just create the Orchard sites on the production server itself (With Web Platform Installer) and port in any themes and modules as necessary?
Or create the sites on the dev machine and Publish to the production environment with WebMatrix and WebDeploy?
I hate to create hello world sites on the production server and add content, themes, modules, etc as I develop them as in option 1. Or, in option 2 doing the web deploy introduces some complications such as database schema deficiencies because the site's db was created on the dev machine's SQL server and WebMatrix doesn't handle porting in the db schema during the Web Deploy (does it?). It seems option 2 makes it a lot more complicated.
What are other people doing in this situation?
Definitely the second option. WebMatrix should handle DB deployment just fine. You might want to take any problems you've faced with this to the WebMatrix support or forums.
I routinely deploy sites from my dev box to production, fwiw.

Windows azure cloud development

I am new to cloud computing. I created a new cloud solution using Visual Studio 2010.
I need to deploy my solution somewhere in order to test it.
As I saw in my researches, I should have an account on http://www.microsoft.com/windowsazure/account/
Currently i do not have an account there, so where should I deploy my application, and how can i test it?
If you go here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/windowsazure/cc974146.aspx you can download the whole SDK and other tools which essentially allows you to run Azure on your local machine. It requires you to have SQL Server installed.
Apologies for the lack of details, it's quite a while since I did it myself. But, poke around on that page and you'll find all the tools and documenation you need. It's a big, hairy thing to get your head around so you'll need to set some time aside to just read, sadly.
Best resource to get started is the Azure training kit, get it here:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=413e88f8-5966-4a83-b309-53b7b77edf78&displaylang=en
Watch some videos then dive into the labs, the best teacher is hands on experience.

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