installing another Web Site Project inside my existing VS2005 website project

[Rob Dob]

Hi,

How do I go about installing another Web Site Project inside my existing
VS2005 website project. I currently have both a forum WSP and my main WSP
application within the same solution. Both compile and run without error.
However they are separate applications and I would like to have them
together in order to make use of my masterpages, and share controls between.
Do I need to combine the web.config files? I figured I would just create a
folder within my current main WSP ( Web Site PRoject ) and call it something
like Forum and then copy the contents of the working Forum Web Site Project
into this new "Forum" folder, but what do I need to do from there?, What
about the app_code folder should I merge the contents from both, how about
the web.config, am I allowed to have two? one in each folder? I'm not sure
if I'm going about this the correct way but what I'l trying to do is
integrate a forum into my main website project, also my main website makes
use of master pages, so ideally I would just link to include the forum
located within the other WSP into the content area of my main WSP forum
page. Is there perhaps a better way to accomplish this. i.e. could I make
thie other WSP forum project into a user control or something that I could
then embed directly into the content page of another main WSP page, much in
the same manner as I would embed a VS tool? or am I best to try and merge
the two WSP projects together.

Any and all advice would be grealt appreciated.

Also both my vs2005 applications are website projects, not the new Website
Application Projects.

All help would be appreciated,

Thanks,

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[Kerem OZMAN]

If I'm not mistaken virtual folders are considered to be application
boundaries for web applications. I mean, for instance, you can not load
controls dynamically if controls are residing in a different virtual folder
than your web application's. And every virtual folder can have a web.config
file within its root (This also applies for the nested virtual folders
scenario.) . You might consider using location element and its path
attribute (in web.config) to restrict access to specific portion of your web
pages. That might save you from using two different web.config files and two
different virtual folders. So you can use a single virtual folder for your
web application and create a non-virtual folder within that virtual folder
to put your forum specific controls and pages and restrict access to those
pages by using location element in your web applications web.config file. Or
you may create some class libraries and web control libraries combined to
package your -embeddable- forum service and then implement that to your web
application. The second one seems like a better solution to me since that
would achieve true modularity.

 

[Rob Dob]

Hi,

">Or

you may create some class libraries and web control libraries combined to
package your -embeddable- forum service and then implement that to your
web application. The second one seems like a better solution to me since
that would achieve true modularity.

"

Is it a difficult venture to take an existing vs 2005 website project and
convert it to a web control library?

Also I guess combining the two projext is NOT the recommended approach
coorrect?

Thanks for all your help.