Professional Visual Studio® 2008

32.7. ASP.NET Web Site Administration

Although running your web application with default behavior will work in most situations, sometimes you'll need to manage the application settings beyond simply setting the properties of components and page items. The Web Site Administration Tool provides you with a web-based configuration application that enables you to define various security-related settings, such as users and roles, as well as application-wide settings that can come in handy, such as a default error page, and global SMTP mail settings that are used by various components, such as the PasswordRecovery control.

To start the Administration Tool, use the Project ASP.NET Configuration menu command for Web Application projects, or Website ASP.NET Configuration for Web Site projects. When the tool is launched, Visual Studio 2008 will instantiate a temporary web server on a unique port and open a web browser to the Administration Tool home page for the application you're currently administering.

You can determine whether the web server is active by looking in the notification area of your taskbar and finding the development server icon connected to the port that Visual Studio 2008 allocated when it was started up. You can stop an active web server by right-clicking its icon in the ...