Publish Winforms Application to a website

Question

I've built a Winforms Application, and I want to publish it. I'd like to have a link on a website https://sites.google.com/site/satsavvyboardgame/home where I can have the user download the application and have it install on their computer. So far, I haven't found any way to wrap everything up in one package, or successfully publish to the web. What are the specifications for the URL to publish to the web? Is there any way to package everything into one item (the site won't allow me to upload/download folders), so that the user could download one item, then run that or something in it? Is there another way to do this that I haven't seen?

I'm using C# Visual Studio 2010 Express, and my application has the code and a couple of XML files that I need to run. All are part of the project, and run fine when I install from a file using the CD publish settings.

I've never published an application before, so any help would be much appreciated. Thanks!

Answer 1

You have 2 general options:

1. use "ClickOnce" which will enable automatic updates each time the user click to install and have several other benefits such as less problems with priviliges.

2. Use "Windows-Installer", which allows you more control of how to do and what to do during the installtion phase. However, shamefully, Package & Deployment project types do not exist anymore in vs2012. there are several 3rd party packages you can work with to create your setup-project.

The ClickOnce is preferable if what the user download is a just a simple standalone game application for example.. the MSI is for the more "rich" applications that should make extensive usage in the machine registry and etc..

The table in this link will give you the data you need to make a decision: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/142dbbz4(v=vs.80).aspx