Creating ASP.NET project in VS 2003

[Dave]

I have an old Visual Studio 2001 VB ASP.Net application; really all I have
are the folders and files from the web server.

How can I "hook" this back up to Visual Studio 2003 so I can update it?

I copied the files and folders to the C:\inetpub\wwwroot directory and
created a web application in IIS Manager. Now I can open the default page
in IE. But I could not create a project with the same name in VS.

I copied the files to the Visual Studio Projects folder and tried to open it
as a project but I got an error.

How can I access this old VB ASP.NET application in Visual Studio?

 

[Guest]

Dave,

You should be able to directly open the original project up. Just back that
one up first. If that doesn't work, some more detail would help such as the
errors you are receiving, etc.

Thanks,
Ian Suttle
http://www.IanSuttle.com

 

[Dave]

Thanks Ian

To recap:
1. I took an old ASP.NET project (the files and folders) and copied them to:
C:\inetpub\wwwroot\old\myprojectname
2. I copied these same files and folders to:
C:\Documents and Settings\dave\My Documents\Visual Studio
Projects\myprojectname
3. In a browser I can view the pages on the local machine as:
http://dell9/old/myprojectname/Default.aspx
4. But I cannot load this project into Visual Studio 2003. When I go to
"Open Project" and point to the file myprojectname.vbproj and try to open, I
get the message:
The projejct you are trying to open is a web project. You need to open
it by specifying a URL path.
5.So I type in
http://dell9/old/myprojectname/myprojectname.vbproj
And I get:
You do not have permissions to open this file. Do you want to open a
read only version?
I click "yes" and the project loads and I am prompted to convert to the new
version of VS. Then, despite the fact that it said it was read only, I can
make changes in the project files. So all appears to be well.

I guess my only question is, is this the correct way to copy a .NET project
from one machine to another when you do not have direct connectivity?

IOW, if the original server is unavailable and all you have are the files to
a .NET project folder, is this the best practice for installing the project
on a new server?

 

[Steven Cheng[MSFT]]

Hi Dave,

I think the problem is that for ASP.NET Web project, it must be hosted in
IIS's virutal dir(configured as an application) rather than put in a normal
folder (just as a winform project). As far as to vs.net 2003, the IIS is
still necessary, in VS.NET2005, there'll provide a test server (in
VS.NETIDE ) so that we don't need to reply on IIS.
Currently when we want to move a web project from one server to another.
We'd better following the following means:
1. Create a new IIS virutal directory and configure it as "Application"
(properites in IIS management console).

2. Copy all the project's files to that new created vritual dir on the new
server.

3. Each asp.net web project will contains a webinfo file.
ProjectName.csproj.webinfo, you can use notepad to open it and there'll
contains the web project's url info such as :
<VisualStudioUNCWeb>
<Web URLPath =
"http://localhost/WebApplication1/WebApplication1.csproj" />
</VisualStudioUNCWeb>

be sure to modify it to the correct value on your new server . Then you can
click the project file (*.csproj or *.vbproj ) to let the new VS.NET ide to
open it and convert it.

Also, here are some kb articles discussing on the similiar problem:

#HOW TO: Move Your Visual Studio .NET Web Project to Another Computer
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;326495

#HOW TO: Deploy an ASP.NET Web Application Using the Copy Project Feature
in Visual Studio .NET
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;326356

Hope also helps. Thanks.

Regards,

Steven Cheng
Microsoft Online Support

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