New Feature in WebMatrix Beta 3: Publish Compatibility

NOTE: Thanks to Ben Byrd for writing this article Smile

We are excited to announce a new feature in WebMatrix Beta 3, called Publish Compatibility. This feature inspects your local application and runs a suite of basic tests against the remote publishing server to help identify potential issues that could prevent your application from working after publishing.

How to use Publish Compatibility:

Install an application or make your own from a template

Site from Gallery walkthrough: http://learn.iis.net/page.aspx/878/create-a-website-from-a-gallery-application/

FAQs for specific applications: http://learn.iis.net/page.aspx/873/installing-publishing-apps-with-webmatrix/

Choose a hosting provider and get an account

We recommend the hosting providers noted on this site (http://www.asp.net/webmatrix/hosts) because they have installed and configured Web Deploy publishing. You may not be able to use Web Deploy publishing with a hosting provider that is not featured here. With older versions of Web Deploy and FTP some features of Publish Compatibility will be limited. You can also get to this page of recommended hosting providers at any time by choosing Find Web Hosting… from the Publish dropdown.

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Configure Publish Settings

There are instructions for doing this at: http://learn.iis.net/page.aspx/871/publish-your-website/

(note that some of the feature names/placements have changed slightly since this was published, such as “Configure…” now being called “Settings…”).

Check if your site is compatible with the remote publishing server

The first time you publish your site, you will see a prompt asking if WebMatrix can upload files to the remote server to test compatibility.
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To access Publish Compatibility after the first publish, select the “Check Compatibility…” option from the Publish dropdown menu.
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Clicking “No” on the Publish Compatibility prompt will continue with publishing. If you click “Yes”, the Publish Compatibly dialog will be displayed and WebMatrix will run several compatibility tests:
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If there was an issue uploading files, the dialog will display an error like below. If you receive this error, check that publishing settings are correct, using the “Validate Connection” button in the Publish Settings dialog to help identify the problem.

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If the test files were published successfully, you will see the compatibility checker running through individual tests. When it is finished, a report will be displayed with the status of each test run.
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Clicking on the “Available” and “Not Available” links will show more information about the test and what to look at if the particular test is not passing.

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Some of the tests that publish compatibility can perform include:

  • Simple HTML support
  • Microsoft SQL Server connectivity
  • MySQL connectivity
  • ASP.NET framework version
  • PHP support
  • Microsoft SQL for PHP drivers
  • MySQL driver for PHP

Clicking “Continue” will continue on to publish preview and “Cancel” will stop the publishing process.

If you cancel publishing at this point, fix up the issues listed from the compatibility test and try publishing again, the above process will be triggered again when you click the Publish button. If you wanted to run just the compatibility checks, select the “Check Compatibility…” option from the Publish dropdown menu. If the issues were addressed, the report will return with green and white check marks.
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