Publish Web Dialog Box

  • Article

The Publish Web dialog box enables you to build and publish a Web application project to a new location. You can use the Publish Web dialog box to find potential errors and compile-time errors in the Web.config file and in other non-code files before deploying a Web application project. Additionally, you can remove source code from the site. This provides a measure of protection for your intellectual property and makes it more difficult for others to access or tamper with the source code of your site.

To access this dialog box

  1. In Visual Studio, open a Web application project that you want to publish to a new location.

  2. On the Build menu, select Publish ProjectName.

UI Elements

  • Target location
    Specifies the output path of the location at which the Web application will be published. The results are written to the specified location, overwriting (without warning) any existing content in that location. You can specify an FTP path, an HTTP path, or a physical drive.

  • Replace matching files with local copies
    Updates the files that have changed at the target location to match the files on the local computer.

  • Delete all existing files prior to publish
    Deletes existing files in the target location, and then copies all the project files for your selected Web application project to the target location.

  • Only files needed to run this application
    Copies to the target location only the files that are required to successfully run the application. This includes all files in the Bin folder, and any files that have the Build Action property set to Content, such as .aspx files, .ascx files, and master pages.

  • All project files
    Copies all the Web application project files to the target location.

  • All files in the source project folder
    Copies all the files in the source project folder to the target location.

  • Include files from the App_Data folder
    Copies all the files in the App_Data folder to the target location. Clearing this check box excludes the App_Data folder from being published regardless of the specified copy option.

See Also

Concepts

Web Application Projects Overview

ASP.NET Precompilation Overview

Other Resources

Projects, User Interface Elements