ASP.NET Web Site or ASP.NET Web Application?

Question

When I start a new ASP.NET project in Visual Studio, I can create an ASP.NET Web Application or I can create an ASP.NET Web Site.

What is the difference between ASP.NET Web Application and ASP.NET Web Site? Why would I choose one over other?

Is the answer different based on which version of Visual Studio I am using?

Answer 1

Web applications require more memory, presumably because you have no choice but to compile into a single assembly. I just converted a large legacy site to a web application and have issues with running out of memory, both at compile time with the error message as below :

Unexpected error writing metadata to file '' -- 
Not enough storage is available to complete this operation. 

error, and at runtime with this error message as below :

Exception information: 
    Exception type: HttpException 
    Exception message: Exception of type 'System.OutOfMemoryException' was thrown.
   at System.Web.Compilation.BuildManager.ReportTopLevelCompilationException()

My recommendation for converting larger sites on memory-constrained legacy hardware is, to choose the option to revert back to the web site model. Even after an initial success problem might creep up later.

Answer 2

Compilation Firstly there is a difference in compilation. Web Site is not pre-compiled on server, it is compiled on file. It may be an advantage because when you want to change something in your Web Site you can just download a specific file from server, change it and upload this file back to server and everything would work fine. In Web Application you can't do this because everthing is pre-compiled and you end up with only one dll. When you change something in one file of your project you have to re-compile everything again. So if you would like to have a possibility to change some files on server Web Site is better solution for you. It also allows many developers to work on one Web Site. On the other side, if you don't want your code to be available on server you should rather choose Web Application. This option is also better for Unit Testing because of one DLL file being created after publishing your website.

Project structure There is also a difference in the structure of the project. In Web Application you have a project file just like you had it in normal application. In Web Site there is no traditional project file, all you have is solution file. All references and settings are stored in web.config file. @Page directive There is a different attribute in @Page directive for the file that contains class associated with this page. In Web Application it is standard "CodeBehind", in Web Site you use "CodeFile". You can see this in the examples below:

Web Application:

<%@ Page Language="C#" AutoEventWireup="true" CodeBehind="Default.aspx.cs"  
Inherits="WebApplication._Default" %>  

Web Site:

<%@ Page Language="C#" AutoEventWireup="true" CodeFile="Default.aspx.cs" Inherits="_Default" %> 

Namespaces - In the example above you can see also another difference - how namespaces are created. In Web Application namespace is simply a name of the project. In Website there is default namespace ASP for dynamically compiled pages.

Edit and Continue- In Web Application Edit and Continue option is available (to turn it on you have to go to Tools Menu, click Options then find Edit and Continue in Debugging). This feature is not working in Web Site.ASP.NET MVCIf you want to develop web applications using

ASP.NET MVC (Model View Controller) the best and default option is Web Application. Although it's possible to use MVC in Web Site it's not recommended.

Summary - The most important difference between ASP.NET Web Application and Web Site is compilation. So if you work on a bigger project where a few people can modify it it's better to use Web Site. But if you're doing a smaller project you can use Web Application as well.

Answer 3

It depends on what you are developing.

A content-oriented website will have its content changing frequently and a Website is better for that.

An application tends to have its data stored in a database and its pages and code change rarely. In this case it's better to have a Web application where deployment of assemblies is much more controlled and has better support for unit testing.

Answer 4

It is always depends on the requirement of your client. ASP.NET just includes flexible features that the user needs for security and easy maintenance of your application.

You can think of a Web application as a binary file that runs inside the ASP.NET framework. And Web sites as a static webpage that you can review and easily deploy source code to.

But the advantage and disadvantages of these two ASP.NET technologies come what is good.

Answer 5

There is an article in MSDN which describes the differences:

Comparing Web Site Projects and Web Application Projects

BTW: there are some similar questions about that topic, e.g:

• Web Site vs. ASP.Net Web Application in Visual Studio note: was removed, no longer on SO
• website or webapplication in.ASP.NET

Answer 6

A "web site" has its code in a special App_Code directory and it's compiled into several DLLs (assemblies) at runtime. A "web application" is precompiled into one single DLL.