How to Deploy the ASP.NET Web Site Administration Tool on a Production Server

Submitted by Marc Porlier on Thu, 06/25/2009 - 12:11

The ASP.NET Web Site Administration Tool (WSAT) provides a quick and dirty means for setting up security and other configuration properties for your website. In the early beta versions of Visual Studio 2005, there was a WebAdmin.axd virtual resource to access this functionality for your site, but it is no longer available--security reasons, no doubt. 
 
For some simple websites with a small, centrally-administered, user base, it would be a waste of valuable development time to build an entire set of management pages. So, for those interested in a quick and dirty, unsupported, untested hack, it is possible to get the WSAT to work on a production server without installing an IDE.
 
There are ways to make this tool available for remote users, but I'm too cautious to open this up. I am only running the tool locally on the production server.
 
There are several posts on how to do this, but I had difficulty get any one of the procedures to work properly. Here's what I did:
 

  1. Create a new subfolder named "websiteadmin" (or whatever suits you) under your main website directory (typically c:\inetpub\wwwroot)
  2. Copy the contents from 
       C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727\ASP.NETWebAdminFiles
    into your new subfolder
  3. Open IIS, select the new subfolder "websiteadmin", right-click, Properties,
  4. In the Virtual Directory tab, click the "Create" button in the "Application Settings" section.
  5. In the Directory Security tab, click the Edit button in the "Authentication and access control" section.
  6. Uncheck the "Enable anonymous access" checkbox.
  7. Check the "Integrated Windows Authentication" checkbox.
  8. Click OK.
  9. Now, on the production server, open your browser to 
    http://localhost/websiteadmin/default.aspx?applicationPhysicalPath=[Phys... Path to Your Web Application]&applicationUrl=\[Virtual Path]
    (e.g., http://localhost/websiteadmin/default.aspx?applicationPhysicalPath=C:\inetpub\wwwroot\mywebsite\&applicationUrl=\mywebsite).

 
 

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