Multiple IIS Express sites in one solution (Solution explorer name)

Question

Visual Studio renames website projects in solution explorer to reflect the localhost url (MyWebsite becomes http://localhost:49356/ for example). If I have multiple websites contained in a single solution, this makes identifying a particular site difficult.

Is there any way to affect the name of the website in solution explorer?

Answer 1

You can play with the name in the project settings, web tab, in IIS settings, but that doesn't mean it's going to work :-) The best way to get a custom name is to embed it in IIS as a virtual directory. However, an alternative you may want to consider is give each of the sites a custom port name. You could give the first site a port of 1111, the second site 2222, and the third 3333, which would be easier to remember. That's the only workaround that I know of.