ASP.NET MVC - Publishing a Website

Learn how to publish an MVC application without using Visual Web Developer.

Publish your application without using Visual Web Developer

You can publish an ASP.NET application by using the publish command in WebMatrix, Visual Web Developer, or Visual Studio MVC application to remote server.

This feature copies all your application files, controllers, models, images, and all required DLL files for MVC, Web Pages, Razor, Helpers, SQL Server Compact (if using a database).

Sometimes you don't want to use these options. Maybe your hosting provider only supports FTP? Maybe your website is based on classic ASP? Perhaps you would like to copy these files yourself? Or maybe you want to use some other publishing software like Front Page, Expression Web, etc.?

Will you encounter problems? Yes, it will. But you have a way around it.

To perform a website copy, you must know how to reference the correct files, which DLL files need to be copied, and where to store them.

Please follow these steps:

1. Use the latest version of ASP.NET

Before you proceed, make sure your host is running the latest version of ASP.NET (4.0 or 4.5).

2. Copy Web Folder

Copy your website (all folders and content) from your development computer to the application folder on the remote host (server).

If your App_Data folder contains test data, please do not copy the App_Data folder (see point 5 below for details).

3. Copy the DLL file

Create a bin folder in the application root directory on the remote server. (If you have installed Helpers, the bin folder already exists)

Copy all files in the following folder:

C:Program Files (x86)Microsoft ASP.NETASP. NET Web Pagesv1.0Assemblies

C:Program Files (x86)Microsoft ASP.NETASP.NET MVC 3Assemblies

to your application on the remote server bin folder.

4. Copy the SQL Server Compact DLL file

If your application uses a SQL Server Compact database (a .sdf file in the App_Data folder), then you must Copy the SQL Server Compact DLL files:

Copy all files in the following folder:

C:Program Files (x86)Microsoft SQL Server Compact Editionv4.0Private

To the bin folder of your application on your remote server.

Create (or edit) the application's Web.config file:

5. Copy SQL Server Compact Data

Do you have a .sdf file containing the test data in your App_Data folder?

Do you want to publish your test data to a remote server?

Most of the time, I generally don’t want it.

If you must copy the SQL data files (.sdf files), then you should delete all data in the database and copy an empty .sdf file from your development computer to the server.

That's it. GOOD LUCK!