Azure Web Site not updating via Visual Studio Web Deploy - visual-studio

This may be a basic question, but I've searched for a little while and couldn't find anything specific to this.
I bought a domain and created the web app in Azure for hosting, and set up the DNS so that it's linked to the Azure Web App. Using Visual Studio 15, I opened the website via the FTP connection settings found in Azure, and was able to create files, edit the html, css, etc. Going forward, I wanted to use Web Deploy with Visual Studio to push new builds of the code up to the web site. I downloaded the publish profile from Azure, and imported it into a new visual studio project. I also copied all the previous files over(it wasn't alot). I got the correct Web Deploy settings and successfully published the solution to the Web App in Azure. However, it never updates the code with my new changes. When I look at the site in Firebug it still has the same files/code that it had when I edited it via FTP.
Any idea what I'm doing wrong?

I followed your steps and everything published perfectly for me. Did you try to simply refresh the file list to make sure Visual Studio is seeing all your files? Are they included in your project?
Also, when you go to publish, on the 4th step labeled preview, try to hit "start preview" and see if it detects any changes.
Also, could you tell me a bit more about your project? Is it a website project folder, mvc solution, etc?

You could try to clean the website to make sure your new files are getting deployed.
Clean Windows Azure Website

Related

Create Visual Studio 2019 project from existing Azure Web App

I have a v7 Umbraco instance as a Web App on Azure but the machine the dev copy was on has been decommissioned and I need now to recreate the dev site in Visual Studio 2019, ideally cloning it from the live site in some way. I have created an empty project and, using the cloud explorer, downloaded the files from the app, but I am unclear whether I just copy them directly into the solution folder or into their own subfolder of the solution folder or whether simply copying them in will do the trick anyway as there's still the database to consider as well. I'm afraid I haven't used Visual Studio since creating this site three or so years ago and I seem to have forgotten most of what I did then anyway, so any help wpuld be greatly appreciated. The only advice I coud find via google was for older versions of VS and so not much help.
Recreating the original project from the live site is probably not going to be possible. It depends how and what you deployed to the live site.
It sounds like what you have is a working live site, but have lost access to the original source code. You should be able to copy the site and get it working elsewhere, but you're probably going to struggle to recreate the original development environment and amend the compiled elements of the website without access to the source code.
The Umbraco.com website has some great documentation on getting started and setting up Umbraco. Umbraco TV is great for getting up to speed quickly too. This should help explain the project structure. I suggest you create a blank Umbraco install to familiarise yourself with how Umbraco works(I wrote a post explaining how to do this with MS VS2015 here).
A typical deployment, using MS WebDeploy or FTP from Visual Studio, wouldn't deploy the project files or source-code for the compiled (.cs) elements of the website, these are usually kept as development files and checked in to source control.The live site probably only has the compiled versions of these file in the bin folder. The good news is the Razor template and view files(.cshtml) should be on the server.
However, if everything was uploaded (it happens) then you may have a chance, in which case you can download the files, potentially open the project and try to run the project locally on the development machine. There's no reason why you can't install an older version of MS Visual Studio alongside 2019 if there's an issue with that version. Although, I suspect this isn't an option since you felt the need to create a new empty project. If this is the case you might be able to add any project files to the the new empty project and attempt to recreate the project that way.
Regarding the database. You're going to need a copy or backup installed on a Microsoft SQL Server (unless you used MS SQL CE which is file based). You should be able to download a .bak file from the server if you're using Plesk or connect remotely using MS Management Studio if not, it depends on the host (Azure will allow access via MS Management Studio). Umbraco will need the connection string configured in it's web.config, the one you downloaded may be trying to connect to the live server so be careful.
Long shot ideas:
If you're really desperate you might be able to reverse engineer some of your compiled .dll using a tool like ILASM.exe but it's not going to be easy;
Perhaps you could reference the .dll in a the new project and it will all work auto-magically?! but I doubt this will work as there will be two application starting points and you'll probably get a runtime exception.

How to deploy a Web API to my web host?

I'm building a RESTful Web API on my local machine and it works nicely. I want to put it on my GoDaddy web host account now. I did this once by copy and paste file by file to the FTP site they gave me. That worked, but it is slow and painful to do and to update when I make changes. Is there a quicker way to publish (in Visual Studio) from my local copy to my FTP site? If not, can you tell me which files I need to deploy for the Web API to work? I don't think it needs all the .cs files, but I'm not sure what files it must have.
OK, I found this link about publishing a website in Visual Studio:
https://msdn.microsoft.com/query/dev14.query?appId=Dev14IDEF1&l=EN-US&k=k%28WebApplicationProjects.PackagePublishOverview%29;k%28TargetFrameworkMoniker-.NETFramework
It didn't really solve everything for me, but I started playing around with the controls in Visual Studio. I was able to publish my local website to FTP by right-clicking on the project node in Server Explorer and click Publish... or click Build -> Publish in the Visual Studio menu. Fill in your FTP connection information, enter the target folder under Site Path and leave Destination URL blank (don't know, don't care). I also unchecked "Include all databases..." in the Project Properties Page for Package/Publish Web because I didn't want to rebuild my destination database. It worked.

Deploying VirtoCommerce.Manager to Azure from Visual Studio

I am working with Virto Commerce server 2.4.561 and I'm having a great deal of difficulty successfully publishing to Azure from Visual Studio. Based on the documentation provided, it's not clear to me what the appropriate method is. Most guidance related to Azure assumes that I am using Git deployment. But in this case I am not. I am coding locally on my dev machine and I would like to be able to use web deployment to deploy directly to Azure from Visual Studio. However, the guidance found here seems to suggest that if you want to do your own deployment, you need to use deploy.cmd. I'm not exactly sure why that is. I can only guess that it has something to do with how the modules need to be packaged up.
I am able to run deploy.cmd and it appears to succeed, but I end up with an artifacts folder with 2,000+ files and folders in it and I am left to use old-school FTP to sync all those files up with the Azure website. Is this how it is meant to be done? I have tried to deploy directly from Visual Studio to Azure, and it appears to succeed, but the site does not behave correctly. Specifically, the custom modules I've built don't load correctly.
What is the right way to do this?
There is a way to publish your custom module directly from Visual Studio, but you still need a working Virto Commerce in Azure beforehand, and the easiest way to set it up is to use the Deploy to Azure button in GitHub.
In the Azure portal create a new virtual application /MyModule with
physical path site\wwwroot\admin\Modules\MyModule. It will be used
for publishing a custom module.
Download the source code from GitHub with the same version as you have published to Azure, add your custom module to the solution and build it.
In Visual Studio right-click on your module project and select Publish.
On the Profile screen select Microsoft Azure Web Apps as a publish target and select your Azure Web App.
On the Connection screen select Web Deploy as a publish method and add /Module to the site name. So your site name should look like this: myvc/MyModule.
On the Preview screen click the Start Preview button and make sure the file list contains only files related to your module and the action is Add for each of them.
When you click the Publish button, Visual Studio will upload all module files to the physical directory configured for the virtual application myvc/MyModule. For subsequent publishing it will upload only modified files.
Update: You should restart the Web App via the Azure portal after publishing in order to load the new version of your code into the application. Thanks to N1njaB0b for reminding.

Set Up Continuous Integration From VSO to Azure, but Website does not deploy

I have an azure website that I have successfully linked to a team project in VSO. When I go to the "deployments" tab of this site in azure management, it says:
The team project is linked. Visual Studio Online will build and deploy
your project to Windows Azure on your next check-in.
Below, it gives options to check in from VS2012 or 2010. I am using VS 2013.
In VS, I am able to check in changes and see those changes building in the cloud in the team explorer. My expectation is that after the changes build, they should be auto deployed to the website. This is not happening. I have made several checkins, and none are deployed to the website. It's probably that I have something configured incorrectly, but I'm not sure how to debug this.
In the Build Settings I am using the TFvcContinuousDeploymentTemplate.12.xaml build process template. One thing I did notice is that the under the Deployment Parameters, I noticed that Windows Azure Deployment Environment is empty, but if I try to populate that I'm not sure what to enter for "Web site name" or "Webspace" under the web site radio buttom.
I have followed instructions on these websites to no avail:
http://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/articles/cloud-services-continuous-delivery-use-vso/
http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/Build/2014/3-584
http://www.visualstudio.com/en-us/get-started/deploy-to-azure-vs.aspx
How can I check on the status of the deployment? How can I make sure that the project/solution is correctly configured to deploy/publish and not just build?
Some additional info:
To set up the continuous deploy, I goto azure management portal, click websites, open the website in question. Click the Deployments tab. It says "The team project is linked, Visual studio online will build and deploy your project to Windows Azure on your next check in". Under YOUR SERVER is lists the correct visual studio online URL for my source project (https://------.visualstudio.com). This is my first time trying CD. It has not successfully deployed yet, but the build is working. Every time I check in changes, a cloud build is triggered and it is successful.
I'm new to this, so I am likely making some unfounded assumption, but after going through the instructions multiple times I'm not sure what I can be missing.
Thank you!
l19 has the right idea in the comment responding to my post. I needed to specify a Windows Azure Deployment Environment. The website name is the name of the website. Webspace is a bit trickier, and unfortunately the documentation link in visual studio redirects to a not found page. This has to be precise (e.g., "west us" won't work). I was able to figure out the proper string by creating a new project from azure and associating it with vso from the start. In this case, the build definition was correctly configured. I opened the Windows Azure Deployment Environment and saw that the webspace was set to "eastuswebspace", so I used the same string in my real build definition and it worked.

Visual Studio 2010 can't open a web browser, tells me to restart Windows every time

I'm trying to publish an Azure application, but can't sign in using Visual Studio 2010. I get the error message "The web browser cannot be started. To resolve this problem, you must restart Windows."
I've tried both rebooting and making Internet Explorer the default browser, but I still get the error message. This also occurs when clicking on other links (for example "Online Privacy Statement" in the same publish dialog box).
How can I fix this, or alternatively, are there any other easy ways to publish to Azure?
There are several ways to publish to Azure. Depending on your preference, some of them may be easy. Some, not so much.
First of all, are you using a source control? If you're using git, then you can use Azure Git Repository that comes free with Azure Websites and also Azure Cloud Services. So when you push your code to the Azure repository, it automatically publishes the final bits to the corresponding site.
If you're using TFS locally (at home or office), you can set up a build task that'll deploy the bits to Azure. Also, check out TFS Preview if you are comfortable with a Microsoft hosted free TFS server.
If you feel comfortable using FTP, you can get the FTP account details from the Azure portal when you set up a new azure website or a cloud service.
Finally, one of the easiest way to publish to Azure is to use the Publish Profile feature.
You'll find a link called "Download Publish Profile" associated with
your azure website. Click on that to download the profile (an XML
file).
Then right click on your VS project and hit Publish. Under Profile
tab, select "Import" and pick this downloaded file.
It should populate all the details for you. Test your connection to make sure everything works okay.
Publish and ENJOY!
UPDATE: Based on the comment to this answer, adding screenshot to show where to get the FTP details for your azure website.

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