Making a website/project Portable - Check List

Question

Good evening/morning/after/noon.

I have an ASP.net 3.5 website and I am using vb.net in VWD 2008 Express, I am also using MS SQL Server 2008 Express, I used ajax tabs and a textBox characters counter control developed by http://www.4guysfromrolla.com/ The database is attached with MS SQL Server Management Studio Express and the files are stored in the SQL default "Data" folder.

The whole project's code and forms are stored in a folder in my E drive. I need to hand the whole project to another coworker who have to finish it, please describe in steps how can i make my website portable (like i can put it all in a folder that he can carry around in his flash disk).

One more thing, I already finished my side of the project, I need to ship it out to this other programmer.

Can anyone suggest something like a: Checklist or Must Do list to achieve this?

PS: I have had a problem trying to move the project from one server to the other, the project seems to look for the dlls of the AJAX control and the textBox counter where i originally unzipped the folders in which they cam in, which i think was on my desktop, although when i added those controls to the Tools tab, i created a new tab, then i choose the dll from the where i unzipped the controls source code, aint that enough?

Thanks in advance

Answer 1

I use the following folder structure for all my solutions

• solution

  • docs

  • libs

  • scripts

  • sql

  • src

docs - contains all documentation

libs - contains all non GAC'ed framework dlls that the solution uses. You should copy the dlls in here first then reference them this way they are a relivive reference from the src folder.

scripts - build scripts for designers who don't have VS installed and the build server

sql - all sql scripts for creating your database

src - all source for the solution we break this folder up into the following file/folder structure

• solution.sln
• project1
• project2
• website1
• website2

etc

Now when you copy the solution folder everything is relative so will work.

I'd advise that you add your project to source control, I'd recommend Subversion/SVN and the TortoiseSVN client