Umbraco - Technical Requirements

Chapter 1: What IS umbraco?
Chapter 2: Technical Requirements
Chapter 3: Skills Requirements
Chapter 4: Getting Started
Chapter 5: Getting Help
Chapter 6: umbraco for Teams

Written by Heather Floyd For umbraco versions: All

Reference
What umbraco is, what you need, how to get started.

For local development and production hosting:

A Windows 2000+ computer with an installed web server (either IIS, or other that supports ASP.Net)
Microsoft SQL Server (MSSQL) or Microsoft SQL Server Desktop Engine (MSDE) or SQL Server 2005 Express Edition
ASP.Net 1.1 (to run umbraco v.2.x) or ASP.Net 2.0 (to run umbraco v.3.x) installed.
Internet Explorer web browser to interact with the CMS back-end (websites created are viewable on any browser your HTML code supports)

For getting your hands dirty in the source code:

In addition to the above...

Generally you will need Visual Studio or another way to view/edit the .aspx and .cs files

*NOTE* Tons of customizations are available without changing the source code, or even programming your own web controls!