Can’t wait for a beta release to check out that new feature? Then install the latest build from core.

In the core group we have a build server and a lot of things happen when it churns out a new build, one of which is the generation of a Web Platform Installer (Web PI) package and manifest. This gets pushed to a public location from where any Windows machine can install a Composite C1 - deliciously fresh and straight from the core group - in less than a minute.

We obviously use this way to deploy the latest build a lot in our QA work, but it is also a great way to show off emerging features and give people a chance to follow progress and try out things at any point in our development cycle.

Setting up Web Platform Installer

Execute the following steps to hook on to our Web PI feed:

1. Make sure you have Web Platform Installer installed
2. For convenience you should also ensure that WebMatrix is installed
3. Launch the Web Platform Installer
4. Click the “Options” link
5. In the “Change Options” dialog, add a custom feed with the URL http://bit.ly/C1NightlyWebPI and click “Add feed”
6. Below “Which Web Server would you like to use?” consider selecting “IIS Express”
7. Click “OK” to close the dialog
8. You now have a new major section (see window top) named “Composite C1”

Launching the latest build

Once Web PI and WebMatrix are in place, this is how you download and run the latest build:

1. Launch the Web Platform Installer
2. Open up the “Composite C1” section. Here you have “Composite C1 CMS” with the build date and a version number if you drill down the product description
   
3. Click “Add” and then click “Install”
4. Click “I Accept”
5. The installation complete. Click “Finish”.
6. WebMatrix launch, your default browser launch and you are greeted with the Composite C1 setup wizard.

Once you complete the setup wizard you have a new website running on the latest Composite C1 build. You can install packages, check out new features, work with content and write code etc. pretty much as you can on an official release, except you literally run on code written just minutes or hours ago.

Let us know if we are moving in the right direction

Since it is not an official release you will be running there might be bugs and UX blunders, and there will likely be incomplete features and interfaces and APIs that will change later. You are very welcome to use the Issue Tracker at CodePlex if you come across something you feel we should not forget to fix.

I would like to encourage you to go hook on to our Web PI feed and install the latest build now and then – kick things around, try to use the emerging features and give us feedback in the forum, as a quick tweet and in the issue tracker - during the development phase your input is most likely shape what the final Composite C1 release will look like.