Is my Visual Studio project a web application or a web site?

Question

First of all, when to use what and the overall differences between them has already been answered before. But I couldn't find an answer to this question:

Where can I check if my Visual Studio project is a Web Application or a Web Site?

Answer 1

The easiest way to differentiate between Web Site and Web Application is to look at the project's icons.

Web Site

• has an icon without the used language
• displays its physical root path
• does not have a Properties folder

Web Application

• has an icon including the used language
• displays the project's name
• has a Properties folder

To find out more about the technical differences between them ...

ASP.NET Web Site or ASP.NET Web Application?

Answer 2

Personally, one tell tale sign for me is whether the project folder actually contains a project file, or not.

You can see the icons differ slightly in VS - a web application has a layered world->docs->language icon and a web site just consists of world->docs.

Also, once opened within VS, right-clicking will display Properties and Property Pages for web applications and web sites respectively; further, on clicking this option you will be greeted with a dialog for the former and MDI tabbed form for the latter - the latter also exposes more functionality to control pre and post build steps and so forth.

A a web application will also display Properties and References special folders as part of the project tree in the Solution Explorer, whereas a web site does not necessarily; unless manually created for some reason (but they still won't be special - web sites use the bin folder for their references).