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set root (~) for web site in visual studio 2015


so this is driving me crazy...
I'm working on a website in Visual Studio 2015 (so from the start page: File>New>Web Site... NOT New Project>Web>ASP.NET Web Application) and things are going well when I use VS as the debugger/localshost.
Now, being cautious, I want to upload the site to a www.mysite.com/sandbox/ folder where I can test out some further items such as database access and the like (since the site is live, I don't want to replace it until I'm ready). But for some reason, all files (which worked fine through localhost) seem to point to "/" for the master pages and other items rather than "/sandbox/" ...
Is there any way that I can tell VS that the root is not where it thinks it is? So far I've verified that this is purely something with the root location: I've cautiously created a different project (with file names that I can easily find & delete on the live server) to see if anything is wrong on the server, but they load fine if I keep the root in the files the same as the root on the server (in other words, if I uploaded my site to the root, the references would be ok). BTW, I've done this in the past where I directly worked at the root level for a site that wasn't active and all worked well.
Is there any way that (perhaps in web.config) I can tell it that any time I set MasterPageFile= "~/Master/masterPage.master" on a page it should actually point to MasterPageFile= "~/sandbox/Master/masterPage.master" ? I was under the impression that the "~" would take care of that, but apparently not? Based on Google searches, I have found that in Web Applications (rather than Web Sites) there is a way to define the 'Web' part, but that option does not seem to be available here...

Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks,
JoeE

EDIT:

So, I'm told this looks like a "wall of text" (whatever that may mean)... Let me give more details with a step by step for an example, perhaps someone can slap me in the right direction.

  1. Open VS2015, go to File>New>Web Site... Pick from
    Installed\Tempates\Visual Basic\ASP.NET Empty Web Site -> OK

  2. Right-Click on the Item under the Solution and Add>Master Page, then edit the MasterPage.master to have this content:

        <%@ Master Language="VB" CodeFile="MasterPage.master.vb" Inherits="MasterPage" %>

    <!DOCTYPE html>

    <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
    <head runat="server">
        <title></title>
        <asp:ContentPlaceHolder id="head" runat="server">
        </asp:ContentPlaceHolder>
    </head>
    <body>
        <form id="form1" runat="server">
        <div>
            <asp:ContentPlaceHolder id="ContentPlaceHolder1" runat="server">
            Some Content from Master
            </asp:ContentPlaceHolder>
        </div>
        </form>
    </body>
    </html>

  3. Add>Web Form (Default) and edit its contents to read:

<%@ Page Language="VB" AutoEventWireup="false" MasterPageFile="~/MasterPage.master" CodeFile="Default.aspx.vb" Inherits="_Default" %>

<asp:Content ContentPlaceHolderID="ContentPlaceHolder1" runat="server" >
    <p>Some Data from Page</p>
</asp:Content>

Now I Test Run it at this point with F5 and I get a browser window that says "Some Data from Page"... as expected.

Now comes the time to upload it to my server (hosted by 1&1):

When I click Publish, it takes me to the Default.aspx page but states:

Parser Error 
  Description: An error occurred during the parsing of a resource required to service this request. Please review the following specific parse error details and modify your source file appropriately. 

 Parser Error Message: The file '/MasterPage.master' does not exist.

Source Error: 



Line 1:  <%@ Page Language="VB" AutoEventWireup="false" MasterPageFile="~/MasterPage.master" CodeFile="Default.aspx.vb" Inherits="_Default" %>
Line 2:  
Line 3:  <asp:Content ContentPlaceHolderID="ContentPlaceHolder1" runat="server" >

Source File: /sandbox/siteTest/Default.aspx Line: 1

My question is this: where do I need to tell Visual Studio that the folder structure really contains everything under the "/sandbox/" folder rather than just "/"? I understand that I can go into the Default.aspx file and change the statement to MasterPageFile="~/sandbox/MasterPage.master" but there -has to be- a better way...?? I was expecting that the entry in the Publish option would do this, but it doesn't... alternatively, I tried to programmatically change this during the PreInit event, but that didn't work...

Thanks,J

Solution

  • Alright... I think I found a solution. Perhaps just a touch bit hack-y, but it works for what I need and hopefully someone else might find this useful. After trying some other options, the one that works for what I need is to keep the structure as-is but to use a subdomain for the testing. So now I publish to sandbox.example.com rather than example.com/sandbox The server now considers the "~/" folder to actually be where I point the subdomain to.

    Thanks for the effort & feedback.