Sitecore Basics - sitecore

Question

I am quite new to Sitecore WCM and have been doing a lot of research and readings. Could someone please help me to clarify the following
basics of Sitecore?
I've a number of ASP.net web applications. If I convert the project to Sitecore project will it just work magically?
If I want to create new site, do I need to manually create a new site in IIS or Sitecore does it when I publish?
Are there any online training videos available, could not find a single (except Sitecore marketing demo).
If we have MVC and Web forms applications, is it possible to migrate to Sitecore?

Answer 1

First off, welcome to Sitecore!
Regarding your questions:
I've a number of ASP.net web application. If I convert the project to Sitecore project will it just work magically?
A Sitecore website is an asp.net web application. It just happens to start off with databases, DLLs, and web.config entries that are ready for you to get the CMS up and running. Standard .NET code works just as normal. However, part of what happens when you first setup your site as a Sitecore website is that Sitecore starts intercepting requests for pages and attempts to bind them to pages in the content tree. If a content item doesn't exist with the matching path, it won't return.
This is particularly important if you plan on just standing up your existing pages alongside new Sitecore pages. Your URLs won't initially work, and you'll have to do some configuration to get them to resolve and be ignored by Sitecore.
However, if you do NOT want to put your pages alongside the site and instead integrate them into the Sitecore solution as content items, you'll likely need to re-architect your solution. Sitecore uses 'sublayouts' (ASCX) for different components on a page, and these need to be represented in the database and the code base, and then added to content items as part of their presentation details. This can be easy, if your site is already heavily architected towards components, but sometimes you'll need to create a bunch of ASCX to represent your different pages.
Your business logic should not be affected, unless you decide to make changes to start leveraging configurations in the Sitecore database or accessing properties of the current context item. In this manner, your code should execute "out-of-the-box".
If I want to create new site do I need to manually create a new site in IIS or Sitecore does it when I publish?
Sitecore doesn't "create" anything when it publishes. Publishing is really just an action of taking the content approved in the Master database and pushing it out to the Web database for the selected target. Your IIS sites, and anything else you need for your application, you just setup as you normally would.
Are there any online training videos available, could not find a single (except Sitecore marketing demo).
I highly recommend taking the developer training that Sitecore provides. It's a very good introduction to the concepts, especially if you aren't working with folks who have a lot of Sitecore expertise. It also allows you to meet some other folks who are getting into Sitecore and you can help each other out.
If we have MVC and Web forms applications, is it possible to migrate to Sitecore?
Sitecore is a .NET application at its core, and web forms work. MVC is also supported with the most recent versions of Sitecore.

Answer 2

I know this question is a little old, and already answered, but I think I have some info to add.
I've a number of ASP.net web application. If I convert the project to Sitecore project will it just work magically?
Nothing is magic. If you want the content management or marketing aspects of Sitecore, plan on rebuilding your site(s) within Sitecore.
If I want to create new site do I need to manually create a new site in IIS or Sitecore does it when I publish?
Sitecore is an IIS site. When you install Sitecore, it creates an IIS site along with at least 3 databases (core, master, & web). Sitecore can have multiple subsites, but they're all built within the single IIS site that is Sitecore.
Are there any online training videos available, could not find a single (except sitecore marketing demo).
These videos may not have existed when this question was originally answered...so here's a few I found useful.
Sitecore Training: Developer Fundamental Series - Creating Visual Studio Project for Sitecore
Sitecore MVC - Getting Started (Part 1)
Sitecore MVC -- View Renderings, #Html().Sitecore, and Models
If we have MVC and Web forms applications, is it possible to migrate to site core?
Webforms and MVC are both supported in Sitecore. You will be thinking of both of them in a different way whenever you are rebuilding them in Sitecore though.

Answer 3

1) You can create blank solution and add existing items like sublayout, css , javascript etc and obviously need to change some codebehind. But sitecore has different database structure compared to normal web applications , so you will need to create template, items etc.
2) For sitecore , you will need to create website in IIS and make entry in your host file as follows:
local path C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc find hosts file and in that file add entry as
127.0.0.1 yoursitename.com
3) For demo video you can try Sitecore channel videos for basic sitecore learning from Youtube.