Re: Visual Studio "New Project" or "New Website"

"GoJets" <c.santee@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:fd59ae0f-b363-4714-a85c-f6911a57e15c@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
All,
I'm finally getting around to learning ASP.net in VS... I've developed
a few Win forms in the past and am fairly fluent in classic ASP but
I'm a little confused about which is preferable and the reasoning
behind choosing either "New Project" or "New Website" when creating a
new site. Are there limitations that are present if you choose what
seems to be the more limited "New Website"?

The following may sound a little harsh, but I hope the underlying point gets across.

You should pretend that "Web Sites" do not exist. They represent a mistake on the part of Microsoft. Here's how you can tell:

When Visual Studio 2005 was released, there was no support for Web Application Projects of the kind we had been using since .NET 1.0. Microsoft actually thought that what we _really_ wanted were these "Web Site" things. The possibility that we might actually have web _applications_ that need to be built and installed like any other kind of _application_ didn't seem to be taken into consideration. This prevented us from upgrading to Visual Studio 2005 for several months, then cost us another six weeks trying to get our web services to even build.

They corrected this fairly soon, as they were told about themselves by many of their important customers, and by loudmouths like me. Visual Studio 2005 SP1 returned them to sanity with Web Application Projects, which are pretty much what we had in Visual Studio .NET 2003. I only wish they would correct all of their, um, more egregious failures to comprehend their customers, just that quickly.

I suppose that a web site is good for a content-driven site, or a site with some data-driven content, but with no server-side code. But these sites can be created using Expression Web or Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer (a misnomer - it's now a good product for creating data-driven web sites, including, of course, SharePoint sites). If that's all you're doing, then you don't need Visual Studio to do it with, and I would argue that the above two tools are better tools for this job.

But, as soon as you start doing any non-trivial server-side coding, then you aren't creating a "Web Site" any more. You're creating a "Web Application". In this case, do not send a "Web Site" to do a "Web Application's" job. Use the real thing, which you'll find was created for this purpose.

Oh, and by this definition, there is never a good reason to create a Web Site in order to develop a Web Service, so just don't _do_ that.
--
John Saunders | MVP - Connected System Developer

.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: "An error occurred accessing your Windows SharePoint Services site files"
    ... This really sounds like a Visual Studio .NET or ASP.NET problem. ... Start IIS and see if you can browse ... > FrontPage 2002 Server Extensions, or some vestigial junk from SharePoint, ... > to create a new web site in FrontPage 2003. ...
    (microsoft.public.sharepoint.windowsservices)
  • Re: Can no longer publish my web site project
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    (microsoft.public.vstudio.general)
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    (microsoft.public.dotnet.framework.aspnet)
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