On my Windows XP desktop, I have a fairly simple ASP.NET targetting .net 4 in Visual Studio 2010. I can run it on my local host by ctrl + F5, it works all fine.
I have a Windows Server 2003, that I can access via mstsc, but also via Explorer. When I go to the publish section of my build properties, i see 4 publish methods :
Web Deploy, FTP, File System, FPSE
I have already installed IIS 6 successfully on the Windows Server, and given all authorizations for everything I could so far (to get things to work in the first place, will check on that later).
How should I proceed to publish to that remote machine ? Should I target a specific folder ? Do I need to setup things in IIS 6 for that site first ? Or will it all get settled from te properties I have in Visual Studio ?
Thank you guys, J.
Personally I've always plumped for a manual deployment; that is I create the Web Site in IIS creating an appropriate AppPool and targeting the correct .NET version to utilise. From there simply copy (xcopy if you will) the appropriate files over, e.g. DLL and all supporting pages such as ASPX, CSS and associated images. In most situations where I have direct / RDP access this is what I run with.
That said, this can be automated from Visual Studio and this can be useful for those situations where you're maintaining an awful lot of sites on a regular basis. With IIS 6 and Visual Studio, this was achieved by installing FrontPage Extensions on the server then utilising the Publish option.
For VS2010 it seems this has been streamlined using the IIS Web Deploy module and configuring the Studio to publish in this manner that looks mildly quick...
HTH