This article takes you through a step by step process in setting up Sitecore in your local environment.
*It is assumed that Github is used as the source control.
1. Download and extract Sitecore project folder.
2. Copy the license file to the data folder in Sitecore. The data folder is usually App_Data. But this folder could be relocated with te following configuration in a config file.
3. Create a IIS application. Point the physical path to the website folder inside Sitecore project folder.
4. Set "NetworkService" as the user for application pool.
5. Add a host file entry for your application.
6. Provide permissions to the "NetworkSerivce" user for the Sitecore root directory.
7. Set up (attach) all databases to SQL server.
8. Update the Sitecore ConnectionString.config in App_config folder to set the database paths to the above server.
9. Add Sitecore license. create a folder "data" in Sitecore website folder and add the license file. This is the default data folder unless changed in the following setting in Web.Config file.
<sc.variable name="dataFolder" value="/data" />