Top 10 gotchas using shared hosting with ASP.NET

Question

I have recently started using a shared-host for my clients so see project progress or to play with a new technology for myself. I seems like every time I deploy a new project that runs fine locally, I run into something new on the shared-host.

Do you have a shared hosting deployment checklist?

What are the common problems you run into when deploying to a shared host?

Answer 1

Medium Trust. If you are developing code to go into a shared host, you should set your local application to run in medium trust otherwise you can almost guarantee you'll get security issues with code that executes fine in full trust but dies in a medium trust environment.

This MSDN article explains about medium trust in more detail:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms998341.aspx

Answer 2

Please check this thread for deployment on the server

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/974799/what-method-do-you-use-to-deploy-asp-net-applications-to-the-wild/974876#974876

Answer 3

They don't always offer you direct access to the database (Enterprise Manager / Management Studio).

You end up using some weird web GUI for creating database entities, which does not accept otherwise valid SQL syntax and you have to update all your queries and stored procedures to accommodate their custom changes and restrictions.

Answer 4

One of mine is file IO permission problems. An example being writing to a file on the web server from ASP.NET. You have to use a provided online tool to allow permission to do more than reads.