Programming ASP.NET MVC 4

Chapter 19. Deployment

You can spend plenty of time using ASP.NET MVC to build the best website in the world, but it’s not going to do anyone any good until it gets hosted on a web server so that users can actually access it. The act of copying your website to a web server and exposing the site to users is called deployment, and it is certainly not a concept that is unique to ASP.NET MVC websites.

In this chapter, we’ll cover a handful of the most popular techniques that you can choose from to get your website onto the Internet—everything from simple file copying to working with “cloud” hosting providers for the ultimate in scalability and uptime.

As you read this chapter, keep in mind that many web applications have unique deployment needs, and the techniques that we show in this chapter may not directly apply to your exact situation. Instead of seeing this chapter as a “how-to” guide with detailed steps, try to think of it as an overview of the various deployment tools at your disposal and be on the lookout for the tools and techniques that apply to your situation.

What Needs to Be Deployed

Before we start creating websites and copying files, let’s take a step back to discuss what it is that we’re going to be doing. At a high level, there are three kinds of dependencies that most web applications have: the .NET assemblies and various files that contain the logic for the site, any custom content (such as CSS or JavaScript files) that the site relies on, and any kind of external runtime ...