Publish ASP.NET MVC 3 (Razor) app onto remote server running Windows Server 2003 with IIS 6

Question

I have built an ASP.NET MVC 3 web application (with exlusively Razor/cshtml pages) that runs fine on my local machine with IIS Express. Now I'm trying to publish it to a remote server that is running Windows Server 2003 and IIS 6 and has just been upgraded to .NET Framework 4.0.

I was able to successfully publish all the files to the proper directory on the remote server using Visual Studio 2010's Publish dialog (Publish method: FTP), and I've followed the instructions for including all the DLLs needed to run ASP.NET MVC on a machine that doesn't have it installed, but now I'm pretty much stuck.

The first issue is that I don't have access to the remote server's IIS. I may be able to get the hosting company to add a virtual directory or change a setting, but I'm not sure they know what they're doing, and at the moment, I wouldn't know what to tell them anyway.

The second issue is that I need my web app to live inside an existing site (the web app is basically a protected members area of the main website). So, pretend the main site is http://www.foobar.com . I'd like my web app to be accessed by entering the URL http://www.foobar.com/members .

Questions

1. Is it possible to publish my web app without access to the remote server's IIS?
2. If not, what exactly do I need to tell the hosting company to add or change in IIS?
3. Do the settings under the Web tab of project properties affect publishing or just local debugging? At the moment, I have it set to use IIS Express, and the Project URL is "http://localhost:7373/". Do I need to change these?
4. Given that the remote server is running Windows Server 2003 and IIS 6.0, is it possible to use Web Deploy or am I limited to FTP?
5. If I can use Web Deploy, what do I put for the Service URL? All I have right now is a URL in the format of ftp://www.foobar.com/www and a username and password.
6. If I need to use FTP, what steps do I need to take to get the app working once the necessary files have been uploaded to ftp://www.foobar.com/www/members ? I'm not worried about database, security certificates, registry, GAC, etc., I just want to know the steps necessary to get the home page of my web app to come up when I put http://www.foobar.com/members .

Answer 1

Have you had a look at this article by Scott Hanselman? In addition to that article, please read the following thread on StackOverflow on pretty much the same environment as yourself.

Edit

Your first step should be to get the hosting company to set up the virtual directory with the following parameters (IIS 6):

• ASP.NET Version: 4.0.30319 (or later)

• Local Path: [root ftp path for main website]\Members

• [ ] Script source access (unchecked)

• [x] Read (checked)
• [ ] Write (unchecked)
• [ ] Directory browsing (unchecked)
• [x] Log Visits (checked)

• [x] Index this resource (checked)

• Application Name: Members

• Execute Permissions: Scripts only

• Application Pool: ASP.NET 2.0