Beginning ASP.NET 3.5: In C# and VB

Chapter 18. Deploying Your Web Site

Congratulations! The fact that you're reading this chapter probably means you now have a full-featured, database-driven ASP.NET web site that is ready to release into the wild. It's an exciting time for you and your project. Pretty soon your application will be used and judged by your target audience.

To make your web site accessible to users on the Internet, you need to publish it to a production server that is connected to the Internet. What kind of server this is and where it is located depends on your own requirements and budget. You can host the site on a home server in your attic with a private Internet connection or you can host it with an external (and often commercial) party with a direct connection to the Internet backbone.

Either way, some work needs to be done to get your site from its development location at C:\BegASPNET\Site to a location where it's accessible over the Internet.

This chapter deals with a few topics related to successfully deploying your web application. You'll learn about the process from preparing your application in the development environment to actually running and testing it at your production server.

In particular, this chapter looks at the following topics:

• How to ease the deployment process through simple changes to your code and configuration

• How to prepare your site for deployment by creating a copy using Visual Web Developer's built-in copy tools

• How to install and configure a web server and your web site ...