Developing Locally with LaGarde’s StoreFront 6.x

I’ve used LaGarde’s StoreFront product for years, and currently have a number of websites running it.  Although it’s been out for a few years, I’ve started upgrading them this year from SF 5 to SF 6.  There were serious issues in the early versions that I wanted LaGarde to resolve before I subjected my customers to their bad coding (which is a topic for another post).


StoreFront’s manuals suck.  Really bad.  Information is spread out in on-line tutorials, the printed manual, and a downloadable CHM.  Some of this information contradicts the other sources.  Some information is totally missing.  Like anyone with a clue, I develop locally.  StoreFront 6 does allow you to do this, but it’s not documented well.


For my local database, I use SQL Server 2000 Developer Edition, which for all intents and purposes is SQL Server 2000 Standard Edition with a licensing restriction.  LaGarde’s connections use SQL Authentication, so if you’re used to having a trusted connection, get out of that habit.  This means you’ll need to create a SQL Server user that has DBO role for your StoreFront DB, and it doesn’t hurt to make its server role be system admin.  Use 127.0.0.1 as the address for your server, and the user you just created for the user.  The database name you ought to know by this point.


In order to connect LaGarde’s client tool to your database, you need to make some IIS configuration changes.  Open the IIS management panel, and drill down to your SSL folder.  Right-click on the SSL folder, and open the Properties.  Go to the Directory Security tab, turn off Allow Anonymous, and enable both Basic and Windows Integrated.


You’ll also need a username and password for a user that can access this folder.  You can create users through the Control Panel.  The user only needs to be a Limited Account, but it does need a password.  In FrontPage, when you open the StoreFront configuration tool, you’ll be prompted for the URL of clientaccess.aspx (usually Posted on Categories StoreFront 6