Upgrade VS2012 project to VS2013 web site and it won't let me specify IIS port

Question

I've recently installed VS 2013 and upgraded my web sites from 2012 to 2013 and now I can't run the sites locally because I have them defined as IIS sites but Visual Studio won't allow me to not use IIS Express. So it runs the sln on a port that won't work for me.

What I've tried:

• setting IE as my default browser and changing the sln file itself
• The option to specify an external host or base URL is grayed out when going to Start Options in the Property Pages.

Any suggestions?

Thanks Robert

Answer 1

From this MSDN article about ASP.NET projects and VS2013:

You can use IIS with web application projects, but not with web site projects

So it sounds like you need to either convert the project to a web application or just use IIS Express.

Answer 2

Web Site Projects in VS cannot be converted between IIS Express and IIS as Web Application Projects are. However, you can still use IIS with websites. You need your website to be created in IIS as a site or application, then do Open Website in VS. This will give you an option to use the file system, local IIS (via metabase), or FTP. (Or, you can do New Website, choose IIS, and copy your files from the existing site.)