Putting your website online from scratch (ASP.NET MVC + Database)

Question

Ok. I made website (in VS 2012 ASP.NET MVC 4) and I have database on my local sql server that website uses. Now, what do I have to do to put it online. Is there any good tutorial that shows how to do this from scratch (there must be but I can't seem to find any).

So I want to know things like: - what are the best hosting sites - do they offer space for my database and how can I connect to this database from sql server or do I have to buy space for my database somewhere else... -where to put files I get from publishing my website from VS -etc..

Answer 1

Scott Hanselman has an article here to Bin deploy your MVC project to your server via FTP.

Follow next steps:

1. you would buy a space on Windows server via a host. Once you do this, you will get the FTP server address, username & password that you would use when Bin deploying.
2. Buy a domain via services like godaddy.
3. Link your domain to your server by changing the name server address through godaddy's control panel.

That's it. This is in short assuming you understand the basics of hosting, domain etc.

Answer 2

I would recommend you to check out Windows Azure. That is one of the best and easiest hosting services I have tried at least. For instance, when you create a website, you can just download the piblish profile and right click at the project in VS and choose publish. Select the publish profile that you downloaded and most of the time you are done.

Check out Troy Hunt's: worldsgreatestazuredemo and Azure Friday to get a feeling for what Windows Azure is.