Question

I have an MVC4 web application

In setting it up on IIS7.5 I added the application to the “Default Website” and set up a virtual directory under http://localhost/myApplication

However, this forced me to change many of my controller calls (specifically js ajax calls) which I previously called in Cassini like “/Home/Index”, I now had to change them to “/myApplication/Home/Index” for them to work on my local IIS.

NOW, when I publish it to a remote hosting server I have to change it BACK to “/Home/Index” for it to work.

This cannot be the most productive way to traverse the development -> testing -> production cycle.. What step am I missing?

I tried to create the applications virtual directory on on just http://localhost/ without appending the application name so that I can call “/Home/Index” at all three stages but it complains that http://localhost/ is already mapped to inetpub/wwwroot.

Thanks for your time.

Answer 1

The steps are like this:

1. Publish your website to a new folder in inetpub/wwwroot (or the place where your applications are kept) like “inetpub/wwwroot/myapp”
2. Go to IIS management, create a new web-site, assign it any free port (like 11001 or something, > 1024 at least) and point it to a folder from the step 1. Bind it to all IP addresses available or to 127.0.0.1
3. Start the web-site.
4. Access it using http://localhost:11001/ (or any other port you’ve set)

Problem is that by default any browser uses port 80 to request a web page, and that port is taken by the default web-site. You have to manually override it or create a site on another port. IIS usually warns you about port collisions.