The most convenient way to deploy a web-based project in Visual Studio is by creating one or more Publish profiles. Each one of them is basically an XML configuration file with a .pubxml extension that contains a set of deployment-related information, most of which depends on the server/target we're deploying our application into--Azure, FTP, filesystem, and more.

We can easily set up one or more Publish profile files using the Publish profile wizard. As soon as we have at least one ready, we'll be able to execute it with a single mouse click and have our application published.

To open the Publish profile wizard, right click on the project's root node--TestMakerFreeWebApp in our case--and select the Publish option from the contextual menu. A modal window should open, showing the following screen:

Don't get fooled by that odd, dashboard-like interface; there are more options you can choose from, accessible by clicking on the right arrow. Among them, the most useful in our scenario will be the following:

• IIS, FTP, etc: These can be used to create an FTP-based publish profile to update our web app in real time, as the new version will be uploaded to the web server in place of the previous one
• Folder: We can use this to build and develop our project through the local File System and then take care of the upload manually