Introduction

One of the goals during development of EPiServer CMS 5 was to split the core from the user interface. Although there is no commercial runtime version of EPiServer CMS 5 it is still possible to run EPiServer CMS without the user interface from a technical point of view with a few exceptions. This document describes what you as a developer or hosting technician need to know when you want to remove the user interface from your EPiServer web site.

Installing EPiServer in "runtime" Mode

In the first version of EPiServer CMS 5 there is no option to skip the user interface when installing an EPiServer Web site. To remove the user interface you will have to delete the "ui" folder that is located in the root of the web site after the installation is finished (or after you have imported your content as this is not possible after removing the user interface). You might also want to remove the location tags in web.config that are related to the "ui" folder although this is not necessary.

Note: Since the "ui" folder is dynamic the name and place of the folder might differ from installation to installation. The actual location of the "ui" folder for your installation can be found in the "uiUrl" setting in the <siteSettings> section in web.config.

What Functionality Will be Affected When Running EPiServer in "runtime" Mode?

Input Property Controls That Require the User Interface to Work While in Edit Mode

Certain webcontrols have been written to make it possible to get the same user interface for changing property values as you have in edit mode. Most of these web controls work fine without the "ui" folder with the following exceptions:

This means that is is not possible to use these webcontrols directly. Is also means that you can not use the property webcontrol in edit mode for properties that use these webcontrols (EPiServer.Core.PropertyPageReference, EPiServer.Core.PropertyXForm and EPiServer.Core.PropertyDate) unless you reassign the user interface. How to do this is described in the SDK section about Properties.

The Dialogs For the html Editor Needs to be Reconfigured

If you want to use the built in html editor on your Web site you have to reconfigure the location of the editor dialog folder in your template. The default setting for the editor is to load the dialogs from the "editor/dialogs/" folder that is located in the "ui" folder. If you have removed the ui folder you need to get a copy of the "editor/dialogs/" folder or create you own implementation of the editor dialogs. You can change the folder that is used to fetch the editor dialog with the property EPiServer.Editor.HtmlEditor.CustomToolsURL on the class EPiServer.Editor.HtmlEditor.