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Installing/Updating a web site

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Installing/Updating a web site

(http://benreichelt.net/blog/2006/2/8/InstallingUpdating-a-web-site/)

Published Feb 08 2006, 02:32 PM by breichelt

Comments

Underwhelmed said:

For my websites, I use AllwaySync. It lets you know which files have been changed and allows you to only copy the files you want (filters). If it's a hosted website and has an FTP, I use this program in conjunction with Novell NetDrive.

For the SQL, I use RedGate SQL Compare. It will create an upgrade script as well.

If you're deploying this for someone else to make changes, then I'm not sure because I haven't gone down this avenue.

# February 8, 2006 4:11 PM

Thomas Kern said:

The only thing we use is this software http://www.sqlmanager.net/en/products/mssql/dbcomparer for the database

as for updating the program itself, why is that a problem?

# February 8, 2006 4:53 PM

breichelt said:

Underwhelmed, thats not a bad solution for when I'm updating the site myself, but I was referring to someone else being able to make the change in the easiest way possible.

Thomas, I dont think I understand your question. Updating the program (the website) can be a problem because I want to update only specific pieces, not the entire site. This isn't an issue with smaller sites, but with a big site that spans many virtual directories, etc, it can be an issue.

# February 9, 2006 9:48 AM

Ryan said:

First, I use RedGate SQLCompare to compare my dev and live databases, so see if there are any schema changes to move across. SQLCompare is pretty cheap, and you can use it from the command line to do this automatically if you're brave.

To do the publishing, I use NAnt, which has a task to copy files from a source directory to destination directory, only copying files that are newer in the source. This handles the "what should be updated" part of it. With a nant you can script out what directories in your source tree should be copied where, so having tons of virtual directories shouldn't be a problem.

NAnt also has some tasks to create IIS virtual directories, which can take care of the initial installation steps of a website, and prove useful should you need to move the site elsewhere.

The setup works pretty nicely for me.

# February 9, 2006 5:38 PM

Jay Kimble said:

I think you already had some ideas for SQL...

In ASP.Net 1.1, I would set up each sub directory as it's own project with the main root dir/project inheriting all the others. Then I could simply redeploy just the one sub directory's (or a couple subdirs) aspx files and put all the DLLs for that project into the bin folder into the root folder's bin subdirectory.

It's not perfect, but it worked fairly well for my efforts.

# February 10, 2006 10:16 AM