Publishing to IIS with Web Deploy using Visual Studio 2015
============================================================

By `Sayed Ibrahim Hashimi`_

Publishing an ASP.NET 5 project to an IIS server with Web Deploy requires a few
additional steps in comparison to an ASP.NET 4 project. We are working on
simplifying the experience for the next version. Until then you can use these
instructions to get started with publishing an ASP.NET 5 web application using
Web Deploy to any IIS host.

To publish an ASP.NET 5 application to a remote IIS server the following steps
are required.

1. Configure your remote IIS server to support ASP.NET 5
2. Create a publish profile
3. Customize the profile to support Web Deploy publish

In this document we will walk through each step.

Preparing your web server for ASP.NET 5
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

The first step is to ensure that your remote server is configured for ASP.NET 5.
At a high level you’ll need.

1. An IIS server with IIS 7.5+
2. Install HttpPlatformHandler
3. Install Web Deploy v3.6

The HttpPlatformHandler is a new component that connects IIS with your ASP.NET 5
application. You can get that from the following download links.

- `64 bit HttpPlatformHandler <http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=690721>`_
- `32 bit HttpPlatformHandler <http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=690722>`_

In addition to installing the HttpPlatformHandler, you’ll need to install the
latest version of Web Deploy (version 3.6). To install Web Deploy 3.6 you can
use the `the Web Platform Installer
<https://www.microsoft.com/web/downloads/platform.aspx>`_. (WebPI) or `directly
from the download center
<https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=43717>`_. The
preferred method is to use WebPI. WebPI offers a standalone setup as well as
a configuration for hosting providers.

You can find more info on configuring your IIS server for ASP.NET 5 at
`Publishing to IIS <https://docs.asp.net/en/latest/publishing/iis.html>`_. Now
let’s move on to the Visual Studio experience.


Publishing with Visual Studio 2015
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

After you have configured your web server, the next thing to do is to create a
publish profile in Visual Studio. The easiest way to get started with publishing
an ASP.NET 5 application to a standard IIS host is to use a publish profile. If
you’re hosting provider has support for creating a publish profile, download
that and then import it into the Visual Studio publish dialog with the Import
button. You can see that dialog shown below.

.. image:: iis-with-msdeploy/_static/pub-dialog.png

After importing the publish profile, there is one additional step that needs to
be taken before being able to publish to a standard IIS host. In the publish
PowerShell script generated (under Properties\PublishProfiles) update the
publish module version number from ``1.0.1`` to ``1.0.2-beta2``. After changing
``1.0.1`` to ``1.0.2-beta2`` you can use the Visual Studio publish dialog to
publish and preview changes.