Easiest way to deploy simple ASP.NET app to hosted IIS 6.0 server

Question

I'm building a simple ASP.NET web application in VS 2008 with a SQL 2005 database. I'm working on Vista and I'd prefer not to install IIS (I'd rather just us Cassini for local testing). Here's what I've tried:

• FrontPage Server Extensions. I installed these on my server, but they broke my default web site and I still couldn't publish from VS 2008 via FPSE.

• FTP. I setup an FTP site rooted at my IIS web root and that worked for a single, default web site. When I setup a second site and move the two into sub-folders, the FTP publishing method from VS couldn't handle publishing to a sub-directory. Security is also a problem with this method since it sends the credentials as clear text.

I've considered a couple of alternatives:

• Install CruiseControl.NET on the server and configure it so that I can start a build on the server and, if it succeeds, XCopy deploy the site to IIS. I'm not that keen, however, on running my build process on my public-facing web server.

• Live Mesh. I considered XCopy deploying to a local directory and using Live Mesh to replicate it to a virtual directory on my server.

Does anyone have a tried and true method of solving this problem?

Thanks, Jim

Answer 1

Just publish it with Visual Studio to a local directory and then copy the contents of the local directory via FTP/SFTP/SCP to the server.

If you need an SFTP server for Windows, check out FileZilla. It can do FTP and SFTP as well, and also it has a server and a client component.

Answer 2

I use Web Deployment Projects to publish to a local folder - which gives me a little more control than a straight publish, then copy to the server like DrJokepu