Overview:
Web Deploy is basically a client-server tool launched by Microsoft. It makes the process of management, migration and deployment of websites easy.
To put it simply, you can write a code in a local environment, for example, in Visual Studio or Web matrix, and then you can publish the updates to your production server with the Web Deploy.
In this article, let us see the steps to publish your website using Web Deploy via the Plesk Control Panel. Okay, so here we go!
Step 1: Activate Web Deploy Feature through Plesk Control Panel
The first step is, you first need to enable “Web Deploy Publishing” feature by logging into your control panel. To take the example of the industry-leading Plesk control panel an example, you can log in to your hosting account easily with the username and password.
After entering the username and password, a list of configuration options will appear, like, as websites and domains, resource usage, emails, etc.
Now, to activate your Web deploy settings on Plesk Control Panel, click on Hosting Setting and tick the Web Deploy Publishing option.
After ticking on the Web Deploy publishing, download all the required files by simply clicking on the Web Deploy Publishing Settings.
Step 2: Open Your Visual Studio
Now, the next step is to log in to your Visual Studio application to open and edit your publishing project. After this, right-click on this project within the left side “Solution Explorer” menu and click on the “Publish” option present in the drop-down list.
Step 3: Publish Your Website
Once you click, there will be a “Publish Web” window where you will see numerous options that include Profile, Settings, Connection and Preview.
From the Profile tab, you can then import the publish profile by clicking on the import option. It’s also possible to use Custom settings. If there’s a need to import your downloaded publish profile, you need to click on the “Browse” button to choose it from the local computer.
After this, click on the Connection tab and select the Web Deploy method here.
Provided that you have already imported a publish profile in the last step, the remaining settings field will be automatically filled as given below.
Site Name: Here, you fill in the name of your ISS website and application, such as webservice.com and webservice/MyApplication.
Server URL: Here, to deploy your web application to a hosting provider, the IIS on the local computer, or an internal server.
User Name & Password: You enter the login credentials for an account to give the authority to execute certain deployment tasks.
Once you have done with all the settings, just click on the “Validate Connection” button so that you get connected to the server. If there you notice the “Certificate Error” pop up, you need to ensure if the publishing URL is correct.
Step 4: Configuring Your Settings
In this step, click on the “Settings” tab and then choose the “Release” publish method in the drop-down ” Configuration” list.
Choose the “Debug” method only if you want to deploy to a test environment.
Aside from this, you also need to define the “File Publish” options. Each option can be understood easily, and you can keep checking the correspondent boxes as you like.
Step 5: Publish Your Web Project
After you have done with all the above steps, you can again preview your settings, and then you can publish your website. It takes time to complete the publishing process, and you can check if the deployment process is complete in the Output window of Visual studio.
The other option is, to go back again to the Plesk control panel and then navigate to “File Manager” and then your website URL.
So, this is how you can publish your web project using web deploy with the Plesk control panel.
