In this tutorial, you will learn some tips, tricks and resources that will help you to become an Episerver v6 ninja 🐱‍👤Learning a new CMS can be daunting at first. When I started my first Episerver project, it was not through choice. Like most developers, I was just told what the client had picked and when the project had to be finished... a month. I had 4 weeks to learn and deliver a working website, great 🤪

Being expected to learn some new technology within a short time scale is a common expectation thrust upon developers. I'm sure everyone reading this has a similar horror story. This meant that I had to learn Episerver v6 fast. The good news is the project was shipped on time, and in the process, I learnt a lot. I thought I would share some insights about what I found most valuable when learning Episerver, so you can master this cool CMS quicker 😎

Install The CMS

Your first step is to install Episerver. Anyone can request a free developer license, and install the demo site on their PC. The installation is pretty simple and, if everything goes according to plan, should take less than 15 minutes. You can create a developer account at [Episerver World](http://world.episerver.com/Download/ and download the latest version (7 as of writing).

After downloading Episerver, you will need to generate a development license key, otherwise, you will constantly see a warning dialogue on your website. You can get a license key from https://license.episerver.com/. When installing Episerver, I recommend you install the Alloy Sample site. It is possible to install a blank website, however, you will struggle going down this route as you will have no frame of reference on how to structure your project.

After that, you're free to have a play around. In order to learn about Episerver, my first tip would be to take the advanced Episerver certification training. I did this for the second Episerver project I worked on and it was definitely worth the three days BUT a word of caution it is pretty expensive.

If you are building an Episerver project, I would advise getting the training after you have been booked to work on an Episerver project and after you have agreed on what will be built. Having a good understanding of what you want to build, allowed me to ask our instructor to recommend best practices relevant to my project. My second tip would be to add the Episerver Nuget feed within Visual Studio. Episerver has its own NuGet feed that only contains Episerver related packages. The feed includes Episerver and community packages and is a great way to learn about what you can do with Episerver. Get familiar with all the packages you can use to extend the CMS. If you are using EPI 6 or below, then the PageTypeBuilder package should be your first port of call. If you're making a mobile site then the MobilePack can save you hours.

After installing Episerver and getting some packages, you need knowledge. This site has around 500 Episerver tutorials on it, so I recommend starting here (shameless plug 🔌)). If this site does not float your boat ⛵, below lists some other resources I would definitely recommend having a look at:

The development community for Episerver is one of the best I have come across out of the major CMS's I have used and there are a number of great blogs with loads of tips and tricks. As you're already reading this, I have a number of tutorials on creating various plug-ins, but