How to stop Visual studio/IIS express from creating new <site> every time it is restarted in applicationhost.config

Question

I am developing a web application in visual studio 2012 and every time I close and open visual studio it creates a new entry with default settings in IIS express's applicationhost.config and since I am using a browser from another machine (windows is in a vm) I have to go into applicationhost.config and fix the binding to * rather than localhost so I can browse to the website.

This is starting to get pretty annoying and I have searched online but I couldn't find any info on it. Does anybody happen to know how to stop this from happening?

Answer 1

Inside the bindings section of the site section, create a new binding in addition to the localhost version like so:

 <bindings>
     <binding protocol="http" bindingInformation="*:21232:localhost" />
     <binding protocol="http" bindingInformation="*:21232:*" />
 </bindings>

After having both lines, VS stopped making new site sections.

Answer 2

Have you set the URL it should use in the project csproj file? You can lock it down there to localhost and a port number :)

For example:

<ProjectExtensions>
    <VisualStudio>
      <FlavorProperties GUID="{whatever your guid is}">
        <WebProjectProperties>
          <UseIIS>True</UseIIS>
          <AutoAssignPort>False</AutoAssignPort>
          <DevelopmentServerPort>12345</DevelopmentServerPort>
          <DevelopmentServerVPath>/</DevelopmentServerVPath>
          <IISUrl>**http://localhost:portnum**/IISUrl>
          <NTLMAuthentication>False</NTLMAuthentication>
          <UseCustomServer>False</UseCustomServer>
          <CustomServerUrl>
          </CustomServerUrl>
          <SaveServerSettingsInUserFile>False</SaveServerSettingsInUserFile>
        </WebProjectProperties>
      </FlavorProperties>
    </VisualStudio>
  </ProjectExtensions>