How to update an asp.net website (just changed files)

Question

I am developing an asp.net website that will need regular updates for source codes and HTML sides. After i have completed the necessary updates, i use the 'publish website tool' and publish the site to my local directory. Then i upload all files to Remote File.

Is there any way to fix my site with just changed files. For example if i have updated just 2 files of 84 (HTML or source side), is it possible to update just this 2 files without any problem?

Answer 1

While Visual Studio does offer a few different compiling/build options, I think that you are probably doing everything just fine for a Visual Studio Website project. When I'm working with a website rather than a web application, I will only FTP the files that have changed. For example, if I were to change some HTML tags around within an .aspx page, then only that page would need to be uploaded to the web server. If I change the Page_Load function in the .aspx.cs page, then I will definitely need to get the updated DLL on the web server as well.

I use FileZilla for my FTP tool and there is an option to only upload the changed files. So after you use visual studio to publish your website, you can grab the entire contents of that directory and drag it over to the FTP server location and only update what has changed.

Answer 2

The ASP.NET website project offers an option in the Project properties -> "MSBuild Options" tabpage where you can set "Allow this precompiled site to be updatable".

Setting this option

"Specifies that the content of .aspx pages are not compiled into an assembly; instead, the markup is left as-is, allowing you to change HTML and client-side functionality after precompiling the Web site. Selecting this check box is equivalent to adding the -u option to the aspnet_compiler.exe command."

according to the docs.