For better control and understanding, you should start developing in an empty project. However, you can install a sample site like [Foundation](🔗) to explore and use for inspiration. The Optimizely project templates provide a preconfigured website with Optimizely Customized Commerce and a Visual Studio project for development.

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Note

If you install a project outside the default location Documents\\Visual Studio\\Projects, ensure that the current user has write permission to the parent directory to which you are installing. SQL LocalDB does not respect the Administrators group.

## Create the project

Customized Commerce is based on two sites: a front-end (CMS) site and a back-end (Commerce Manager) site. Before you continue, follow the 5 steps under [Installing Commerce](🔗) to create an empty Commerce project.

The installed folder structure is similar to a "plain" CMS site except there are two sites, back-end and front-end, and an **Infrastructure **folder containing **InitializationModule**.

The [initialization module](🔗) ensures that the catalog structure is added under the site's root level.

## Update to the latest

See [Install Optimizely](🔗) to add the latest updates to a Commerce 13 site.