Deploying ASP.NET web application

Question

I will be deploying my web application this weekend on a testing server. I have already had a couple of attempts at putting it up and have found trouble with:

• Database connection
• Authentication
• Masterpage references

What major/minor pitfalls have you found and how would I go about avoiding or fixing them?

Or is there a one stop fix all for deploying web applications?

Answer 1

Hai Kieran,

Just have a look at this it may give you some idea Deploying Tips for asp.net web application

Let me know if you have any issues while deploying.....

Answer 2

Well this week we have been testing and deploying our ASP.NET web application onto a web farm using IIS 7.

We want to keep session state and to have a web farm persist it to a SQL database. The gotcha that have got us is that all objects that are put into the session must be serializable when using SQL Server for session state. Grr!

Edit: Come on Velocity! This allows us to use a WCF service as session state in a web farm configuration.

Answer 3

In the end, easy deployment should be part of the architectural-level design. It's one of those things that can be tricky to shoe-horn in at the end of a project. In addition to just getting the site running, you also need to include things like versioning, configuration changes, build process, support for multiple servers (if appropriate), etc.

A few guidelines:

1. Centralize as many of your configuration parameters as you can
2. Use a build process that lets you switch from local to production mode
3. Flag config parameters with "debug" or "production", to make it easy to know which is which
4. It's generally a good idea to pre-build a site in your dev environment, and deploy in binary form
5. There are add-ins for Visual Studio that can help simplify / streamline the process
6. Consider using image-based deployment for larger multi-server environments
7. Consider using a staging environment, where things are 99% the same as your production site
8. Don't forget to include IIS configuration details as part of your deployment process

In case it's of any interest, I cover deployment issues in my book: Ultra-Fast ASP.NET.