Publish Web Site Headaches

[Alex Greenberg]

I don't know, but I find the Publish Web Site feature very lacking and
weak.

I mean, why does the damn thing have to delete unrelated directories
like /images /documents etc.

This is so impractical, what if my users generate these documents or
images through their interaction with the site, and then I change some
code and publish it, boom, everything is gone. I cannot put these
folders outside the solution due to security/pathing issues, which I
imagine is pretty common.

What is the solution here? do I have to download everything, change the
code, then upload again? this just doesn't make any sense at all.

Also, why does Publish have to upload my site's 10MB ASPNET.MDF files,
plus my site's 5MB /img folder every time????

Publishing my site takes about 10 minutes every time. Isn't there a
better way?? (I cannot put the code files and edit them remotely due to
my host's restrictions with debugging).

Is the Web Deployment Project the way to go? from what I've seen, it
only works locally. Is the idea that I just take whatever I want from
that dir and copy it over? that is just way too tedious, picking and
choosing dirs and files every time.

Thanks,

Alex

 

[Mr Newbie]

You dont say what version you are running on, the fact you are saying
'Publish' leads me to believe it's 2005 ?

 

[Alex Greenberg]

Of course it's VS 2005. I would have complained a long time ago if
this was in VS 2003.

 

[Otis Mukinfus]

I don't know, but I find the Publish Web Site feature very lacking and
weak.

I mean, why does the damn thing have to delete unrelated directories
like /images /documents etc.

This is so impractical, what if my users generate these documents or
images through their interaction with the site, and then I change some
code and publish it, boom, everything is gone. I cannot put these
folders outside the solution due to security/pathing issues, which I
imagine is pretty common.

What is the solution here? do I have to download everything, change the
code, then upload again? this just doesn't make any sense at all.

Also, why does Publish have to upload my site's 10MB ASPNET.MDF files,
plus my site's 5MB /img folder every time????

Publishing my site takes about 10 minutes every time. Isn't there a
better way?? (I cannot put the code files and edit them remotely due to
my host's restrictions with debugging).

Is the Web Deployment Project the way to go? from what I've seen, it
only works locally. Is the idea that I just take whatever I want from
that dir and copy it over? that is just way too tedious, picking and
choosing dirs and files every time.

Thanks,

Alex

Alex,

I think there is a setting you can use to only deploy changed objects,
but I might be wrong about that.

If you haven't changed everything in the sight, just FTP the items you
changed to the remote site. It's usually a lot faster doing it that
way. ASP.NET doesn't care if you just copy the changed items via FTP
as long as you're not using precompiled deployment.

I'm assuming you're using .NET 2.0, but it's about the same with
version 1.1. You just need to make sure you copy any changed DLLs
when working with .NET 1.1.


Otis Mukinfus
http://www.otismukinfus.com
http://www.tomchilders.com

 

[Alex Greenberg]

Otis,

I thought ASP.net 2.0's Publish is equivalent to pre-compilation. In
other words. the site doesn't contain any code, and the aspx pages are
just pointers to the precompiled files in the /bin folder. In other
words, there's no easy way to update unless I re-publish.

 

[Otis Mukinfus]

Otis,

I thought ASP.net 2.0's Publish is equivalent to pre-compilation. In
other words. the site doesn't contain any code, and the aspx pages are
just pointers to the precompiled files in the /bin folder. In other
words, there's no easy way to update unless I re-publish.

Alex,

I'm confused.

When you choose "Copy Web Site" from the "WebSite" menu in the VS 2005
IDE, do you not get a list of the files on the web site (the left hand
list) and in the working site (right hand list) after logging on to
the site? This list shows the status (changed, unchanged or new) of
the items in the list. All you have to do is select the items you
want to deploy and click the arrow pointing to the remote (deployment)
site. Doesn't that work for you?


Otis Mukinfus
http://www.otismukinfus.com
http://www.tomchilders.com

 

[gerry]

thats how i do it :

- create a web deployment project do 'publish' the site to a local file
based site,
- add the published site to your solution,
- use CopyTo to actual update the remote site from the published site

the web deployment project and publish do basically the same thing but the
deployment project lets you do a whole lot more - modify config files,
exclude things etc.

imo , the actual 'Publish' functionality is pretty close to useless as far
as publishing to remote web sites - and would more appropriately be called
"Compile".

 

[Alex Greenberg]

Thanks Gerry,

I'll try that method, it makes a lot more sense than just plain
publish, and it's not as painful.

Regards,

Alex

 

[Alex Greenberg]

Well I tried that, and after copying the files in my bin dir, the site
failed to open...

What kind of pre-compilation options are you using? Fixed names?
Updatable?

Thanks,

Alex

 

[gerry]

No Fixed Names
No Strong Names
Merge into single assembly
Treat as Library
Remove App_Data folder

besides the bin directory you also need your web.config at a minimnum
depending on your IIS settings you may also need your aspx stubs

what do you mean exactly by "failed to open" ?
what type of error are you getting ?