Publish to Windows hosting with Web Deploy

Web Deploy publishes your ASP.NET site from Visual Studio straight to your Windows hosting, over an encrypted HTTPS connection. You switch it on per website, publish with a publishing account and import that account's Publish Profile once.

Switch on Web Deploy for a website

1. In the client area, open your hosting service and select the Web Deploy tab.
2. In the Websites table, turn the Web Deploy switch on in the row of your website.

The Server column shows the address programs publish to, such as webdeploy.example.com:8172, with your own domain in place of example.com. The copy button next to it copies the address, and under the domain you see its Site name. Until the domain points to the server, the address shows Waiting for its certificate; the name works by itself once the domain points here. When your domain's DNS is not with us, add an A record for webdeploy at your DNS provider, as for webmail.

Add a publishing account

Under Publishing accounts, select New Account, enter the User name and a Password of its own, not the one of your hosting service, and select Create Account. The password has at least 10 characters, mixing three of lower case, upper case, digits and symbols. Account names look like hw12_deploy, and the list shows the full name to sign in with.

Each account has a row with:

• State: the switch that turns the account on or off. Off, it cannot publish until you enable it again. Five wrong passwords lock an account for 15 minutes, and the state then shows Locked For 15 Minutes; a new password lifts the lock at once.
• Publish Profile: downloads the profile for Visual Studio.
• Change Password: sets a new password for the account.
• The bin icon, which deletes the account.

Download the Publish Profile

1. Select Publish Profile in the account's row.
2. If the account publishes more than one website, choose the website and select Show Profile.
3. We send a 6-digit code to your e-mail address. Enter it in Code within 10 minutes and select Confirm Code.
4. Select Download Profile. The file example.com.PublishSettings is named after your domain. The same window shows the Server, Site name, User name and Password, hidden until you select Show Password, so you can also type them by hand.

Publish from Visual Studio

1. Open your project in Visual Studio, right-click it and choose Publish.
2. Choose Import Profile, select the .PublishSettings file and finish the wizard.
3. Optionally, Validate Connection in the profile settings checks the details first.
4. Select Publish.

The How to publish panel at the bottom of the Web Deploy tab repeats these steps. Under By hand, it lists the Server, Site name and User name to type into another program.

Verify: the Output window ends with a successful publish, and your website shows the new version.

Publish with msdeploy.exe

On a build server or from the command line, publish a folder with msdeploy.exe. Use the msdeploySite value from inside the profile as the site name, and the account's user name and password:

msdeploy.exe -verb:sync -source:contentPath="C:\publish\mysite" -dest:contentPath="SITE_NAME",computerName="https://webdeploy.example.com:8172/msdeploy.axd?site=SITE_NAME",userName="hw12_deploy",password="YOUR_PASSWORD",authType="Basic"

Replace SITE_NAME, the account name, YOUR_PASSWORD and the domain with your own values.

Troubleshooting

Visual Studio says it is not authorised. Check that the account's State is on and that Web Deploy is on for the website. If you changed the password, download a new Publish Profile and import it again. If the state shows Locked For 15 Minutes, wait, or set a new password with Change Password.

Publishing stops with a permissions error (ASP.NET 4.x). Folder permissions are set by the panel. Under ASP.NET 4.x, the How to publish panel gives the line to add to your profile file:

<IncludeSetAclProviderOnDestination>False</IncludeSetAclProviderOnDestination>

The code does not arrive. The window shows which e-mail address we sent it to; look in that mailbox's spam folder too. After 10 minutes the code expires: select Publish Profile again for a new one.

Files cannot be overwritten (ASP.NET Core). A running app locks its files. Under ASP.NET Core, the How to publish panel of the Web Deploy tab gives the line to add to your profile file (.pubxml), so Web Deploy takes the app offline while it publishes. See also deploy an ASP.NET site for app_offline.htm.

Next steps

• Choose the runtime and connect a database: deploy an ASP.NET site.
• Upload single files without Visual Studio: upload files on Windows hosting.
• Errors after publishing: ASP.NET and IIS errors.