Developing lots of top level webs - whats the best method?

[Martin Zachs]

I'm new to ASP.NET, but 5+ years experienced with conventional ASP. We
currently use "non-isolated" development using Frontpage Extensions for lots
of websites (100+).

To move to ASP.NET, I've read the numerous documents on .NET Team
development at
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dnbda/html/tdlg_ch3.asp,
and think that Isolated development is the best solution for us (using VSS
for source control).

However, using Isolated development, if my understanding is correct, each
web application would be created at http://localhost/webapplication1,
http://localhost/webapplication2 etc.

This leads to a problem as each web application needs to be a top level web
so that from "webapplication2" there is no way of accessing
"webapplication1" files and vice-versa. Also from any page within
"webapplication1" we want to access things like images from the root, e.g.
"/images" and not use the "../../../images" etc convention.

Is there any way of doing this using the Isolated model, or do we have to
use semi-isolated? Any experiences of anyone would be appreciated.

 

[John Saunders]

I'm new to ASP.NET, but 5+ years experienced with conventional ASP. We
currently use "non-isolated" development using Frontpage Extensions for lots
of websites (100+).

To move to ASP.NET, I've read the numerous documents on .NET Team
development at
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dnbda/html/tdlg_ch3.asp,
and think that Isolated development is the best solution for us (using VSS
for source control).

However, using Isolated development, if my understanding is correct, each
web application would be created at http://localhost/webapplication1,
http://localhost/webapplication2 etc.

This leads to a problem as each web application needs to be a top level web
so that from "webapplication2" there is no way of accessing
"webapplication1" files and vice-versa. Also from any page within
"webapplication1" we want to access things like images from the root, e.g.
"/images" and not use the "../../../images" etc convention.

Is there any way of doing this using the Isolated model, or do we have to
use semi-isolated? Any experiences of anyone would be appreciated.

You can do it fine with isolated mode.

Although you may develop the web site at http://localhost/webapplication1,
you can still deploy it to http://webapplication1.domain.com/.

Be careful of URLs. Relative URLs will work fine no matter where the site is
deployed, but absolute URLs will obviously fail in one location or the
other. A third kind of URL can be used with any server-side controls. The
URL "~/images/spacer.gif" would refer to
"http://localhost/webapplication1/images/spacer.gif" on a developer
workstation, but to "http://webapplication1.domain.com/images/spacer.gif" on
the production site.