I have several Web Application projects that I deploy using "Publish" on the "Build" menu. Sometimes "Publish" reports that it worked, but actually nothing has changed. Can anyone suggest a solution? Is FTP the only way to publish to Winhost? Also, "Publish" by FTP is very slow when the whole site must be published.
Basically FTP is the only way to connect to our server. Even if you use the Publish method you are going through FTP. Have you read this kb article? http://support.Winhost.com/KB/a483/how-to-deploy-visual-studio-20082005-visual-web-developer.aspx What do you mean by this? Are you sure you are upload to the correct location and the correct server?
Thanks. Yes, I used the post to set it up, and yes the location is correct. And it works most of the time. But 1/3 to 1/4 of the time, I'll go look after an apparently successful publish (using an FTP client) and find some files unchanged -- maybe even all (I haven't checked them all). It seems to happen more often with web.config, but that could be my imagination. Web.config is often successfully published, however. Could it have to do with permissions of files on my Winhost site?
Permissions probably wouldn't cause an intermittent problem like that. In any kind of file transfer, no matter what the method is, that kind of partial failure is usually due to a network issue. A connection that is dropping packets or something. When you see the problem again, try doing a ping and/or traceroute to the server to see if there is a network problem.
OK. Thanks. Good point about permissions. The funny thing is that Visual Studio reports success, but some files are unchanged.
For something like this I also suggest using a true FTP client such as FileZilla. The reason being is that it creates a FTP log which is very useful for FTP troubleshooting. The FTP log is a communication log between your computer and our server.
I wonder if Publish uses the file timestamp to determine what has changed. If so, it might have something to do with slight differences in the time on the server and publishing computer. I don't think that's what I'm seeing, but it's possible. I don't think I've seen any failures when I told VS to clear the destination folder (but it takes a long time) or after deleting the file to be updated from the server.
