Introduction to ASP.NET Deployment
Like Windows Forms applications, the solution for an ASP.NET application contains all the information about the project that the installation package needs. Because of this, you can use simple methods (such as XCopy) or more robust methods (such as Windows Installer) to deploy an application. The decisions you need to make when determining how to deploy your applications to a Web server are
Does the application already exist on the Web server?
Do special Registry entries need to be made for COM components when I deploy?
Do I need to worry about other files that aren't part of my application?
Based on the answers to these questions, your options for deploying an ASP.NET application can vary. The key ingredient to making an ASP.NET application function is Internet Information Server (IIS). IIS is the Web server that serves up Web pages, and it's what the ASP.NET runtime uses to make your ASP.NET applications work.
If you're deploying a Web project for the first time, you can use three methods of deployment:
Copy Project— This copies the necessary files to a new directory on the Web server. It doesn't configure the Web server.
XCopy Deployment— This simply uses the DOS XCopy command to copy a file from point A on your development machine to point B on the Web server. You must manually configure the directory and application on IIS to make the Web site accessible.
Windows Installer— This creates and configures the ASP.NET application on a Web server. Using Windows Installer is the most full-featured and robust way to deploy ASP.NET applications.
You are going to learn how to use each of these methods of deployment.
Note
When you deployed Windows Forms applications two days ago, the last exercise of the day was to go through the installation of the .NET Framework as part of a deployment project. The .NET Framework redistributable is required to run any .NET application, not just Windows Forms. To make your Web project deployments successful, you must install the same .NET Framework redistributable that you used for Windows Forms deployment on the Web server from which you plan to run ASP.NET applications. The 20MB redistribution package has everything that's needed to successfully deploy and run ASP.NET applications on an IIS Web server.