Deploy projects to shared hosting

Use this procedure to migrate an existing Sitefinity CMS project from your development machine to a shared hosting. You do not need to install Sitefinity CMS on the production server. You upload your files on the shared host server using FTP connection. To do this, you must have an FTP client installed.

NOTE: You can use the free FTP client for Mozilla Firefox FireFTP or any other FTP client.

To upload your project, perform the following:

  1. Add machine key configuration in your web.config file.
    Make sure that you do not use autogenerated machine key that is in the web.config. You can use a third-party machine key generator to generate a key.
    For more information, see https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/w8h3skw9(v=vs.100).aspx.
  2. Open your FTP client and enter your FTP credentials.

    NOTE: Your host must provide you with username, password, and port number.

  3. Connect to the server.

    For more information, see your FTP client's documentation.

  4. Upload your files in root directory of the server.
  5. If your website project uses Microsoft SQL Server database, instead of Microsoft SQL Server Express, you must move the SQL database to the new location. You can do this with either backup and restore the database, or with de-attach and attach through SQL Management Studio. For more information, see http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314546.

    NOTE: After restoring the database, you must obtain a connection string. A connection string is formed using the database name, the username, and the password.
    Following is an example of how a connection string is formed:

    Data Source=myServerAddress; Initial Catalog=myDataBase; User Id=myUsername; Password=myPassword;

    For more information about connection strings, see Connection strings for SQL Server 2008.

  6. Open your project files on the new location.
  7. Click folder App_Data » Sitefinity CMS » Configuration.
  8. Open file DataConfig and enter the obtained connection string inside.

    NOTE: Make sure that the .NET framework version is set to your project's .NET version. You can do this from the control panel of your hosting.

After performing the above procedure, you will have a fully workable and deployed website.

Troubleshooting

If while accessing the WCF service you get an error concerning the IIS authentication scheme, visit https://support.discountasp.net/KB/a803/error-accessing-wcf-service-iis-specified-authentication.aspx?KBSearchID=219471 for instructions.

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