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

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Web Site   use when the website is created by graphic designers and the programmers only edit one or two pages  Web Application   use when the application is created by programmers and the graphic designers only edit one or two paged images   Web Sites can be worked on using any HTML tools without having to have developer studio  as project files don   t need to be updated  etc  Web applications are best when the team is mostly using developer studio and there is a high code content    Some coding errors are found in Web Applications at compile time that are not found in Web Sites until run time    Warning    I wrote this answer many years ago and have not used Asp net since     I expect things have now moved on

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Web Site is what you deploy to an ASP NET web server such as IIS  Just a bunch of files and folders  There   s nothing in a Web Site that ties you to Visual Studio  there   s no project file   Code-generation and compilation of web pages  such as  aspx   ascx   master  is done dynamically at runtime  and changes to these files are detected by the framework and automatically re-compiled  You can put code that you want to share between pages in the special App Code folder  or you can pre-compile it and put the assembly in the Bin folder   Web Application is a special Visual Studio project  The main difference with Web Sites is that when you build the project all the code files are compiled into a single assembly  which is placed in the bin directory  You don   t deploy code files to the web server  Instead of having a special folder for shared code files you can put them anywhere  just like you would do in class library  Because Web Applications contains files that are not meant to be deployed  such as project and code files  there   s a Publish command in Visual Studio to output a Web Site to a specified location   App Code vs Bin  Deploying shared code files is generally a bad idea  but that doesn   t mean you have to choose Web Application  You can have a Web Site that references a class library project that holds all the code for the Web Site  Web Applications is just a convenient way to do it   CodeBehind  This topic is specific to  aspx and  ascx files  This topic is decreasingly relevant in new application frameworks such as ASP NET MVC and ASP NET Web Pages which do not use codebehind files   By having all code files compiled into a single assembly  including codebehind files of  aspx pages and  ascx controls  in Web Applications you have to re-build for every little change  and you cannot make live changes  This can be a real pain during development  since you have to keep re-building to see the changes  while with Web Sites changes are detected by the runtime and pages controls are automatically recompiled   Having the runtime manage the codebehind assemblies is less work for you  since you don t need to worry about giving pages controls unique names  or organizing them into different namespaces   I   m not saying deploying code files is always a good idea  specially not in the case of shared code files   but codebehind files should only contain code that perform UI specific tasks  wire-up events handlers  etc  Your application should be layered so that important code always end up in the Bin folder  If that is the case then deploying codebehind files shouldn t be considered harmful   Another limitation of Web Applications is that you can only use the language of the project  In Web Sites you can have some pages in C   some in VB  etc  No need for special Visual Studio support  That   s the beauty of the build provider extensibility   Also  in Web Applications you don t get error detection in pages controls as the compiler only compiles your codebehind classes and not the markup code  in MVC you can fix this using the MvcBuildViews option   which is compiled at runtime   Visual Studio  Because Web Applications are Visual Studio projects you get some features not available in Web Sites  For instance  you can use build events to perform a variety of tasks  e g  minify and or combine Javascript files   Another nice feature introduced in Visual Studio 2010 is Web config transformation  This is also not available in Web Sites  Now works with Web Sites in VS 2013   Building a Web Application is faster than building a Web Site  specially for large sites  This is mainly because Web Applications do not compile the markup code  In MVC if you set MvcBuildViews to true then it compiles the markup code and you get error detection  which is very useful  The down side is that every time you build the solution it builds the complete site  which can be slow and inefficient  specially if you are not editing the site  l find myself turning MvcBuildViews on and off  which requires a project unload   On the other hand  with Web Sites you can choose if you want to build the site as part of the solution or not  If you choose not to  then building the solution is very fast  and you can always click on the Web Site node and select Build  if you   ve made changes   In an MVC Web Application project you have extra commands and dialogs for common tasks  like    Add View        Go To View        Add Controller     etc  These are not available in an MVC Web Site   If you use IIS Express as the development server  in Web Sites you can add virtual directories  This option is not available in Web Applications   NuGet Package Restore does not work on Web Sites  you have to manually install packages listed on packages config Package Restore now works with Web Sites starting NuGet 2 7

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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

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Websites - No solution file will be created  If we want to create websites no need for visual studio   Web Application - A solution file will be created  If we want to create web application should need the visual studio  It will create a single  dll file in bin folder

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One of the key differences is that Websites compile dynamically and create on-the-fly assemblies  Web applicaitons compile into one large assembly   The distinction between the two has been done away with in Visual nbsp Studio nbsp 2008

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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

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Website  The Web Site project is compiled on the fly  You end up with a lot more DLL files  which can be a pain  It also gives problems when you have pages or controls in one directory that need to reference pages and controls in another directory since the other directory may not be compiled into the code yet  Another problem can be in publishing  If Visual Studio isn t told to re-use the same names constantly  it will come up with new names for the DLL files generated by pages all the time  That can lead to having several close copies of DLL files containing the same class name  which will generate plenty of errors  The Web Site project was introduced with Visual Studio 2005  but it has turned out not to be popular  Web Application  The Web Application Project was created as an add-in and now exists as part of SP 1 for Visual Studio 2005  The main differences are the Web Application Project was designed to work similarly to the Web projects that shipped with Visual Studio 2003  It will compile the application into a single DLL file at build time  To update the project  it must be recompiled and the DLL file published for changes to occur  Another nice feature of the Web Application project is it s much easier to exclude files from the project view  In the Web Site project  each file that you exclude is renamed with an excluded keyword in the filename  In the Web Application Project  the project just keeps track of which files to include exclude from the project view without renaming them  making things much tidier  Reference The article ASP NET 2 0 - Web Site vs Web Application project also gives reasons on why to use one and not the other  Here is an excerpt of it    You need to migrate large Visual Studio  NET 2003 applications to VS 2005  use the Web Application project  You want to open and edit any directory as a Web project without creating a project file  use Web Site project  You need to add pre-build and post-build steps during compilation  use Web Application project  You need to build a Web application using multiple Web projects  use the Web Application project  You want to generate one assembly for each page  use the Web Site project  You prefer dynamic compilation and working on pages without building entire site on each page view  use Web Site project  You prefer single-page code model to code-behind model  use Web Site project    Web Application Projects versus Web Site Projects  MSDN  explains the differences between the web site and web application projects  Also  it discusses the configuration to be made in Visual Studio

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In Web Application Projects  Visual Studio needs additional  designer files for pages and user controls  Web Site Projects do not require this overhead  The markup itself is interpreted as the design

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One of the key differences is that Websites compile dynamically and create on-the-fly assemblies  Web applicaitons compile into one large assembly   The distinction between the two has been done away with in Visual nbsp Studio nbsp 2008

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This may sound a bit obvious  but I think it s something that is misunderstood because Visual nbsp Studio nbsp 2005 only shipped with the web site originally  If your project deals with a website that is fairly limited and doesn t have a lot of logical or physical separation  the website is fine  However if it is truly a web application with different modules where many users add and update data  you are better off with the web application   The biggest pro of the website model is that anything in the app code section is dynamically compiled  You can make C  file updates without a full redeploy  However this comes at a great sacrifice  A lot of things happen under the covers that are difficult to control  Namespaces are difficult to control and specific DLL usage goes out the window by default for anything under app code since everything is dynamically compiled   The web application model does not have dynamic compilation  but you gain control over the things that I have mentioned   If you are doing n-tier development  I highly recommend the web application model  If you are doing a limited web site or a quick and dirty implementation  the web site model may have advantages   More detailed analysis can be found in      Web Application Projects and Web Deployment Projects are here Web Site or Web Application

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Here Web Supportive Application is an example of website  Website and Web Application both can be dynamic static its depends upon requirements  here is an example to understand working of website s and web application

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Here Web Supportive Application is an example of website  Website and Web Application both can be dynamic static its depends upon requirements  here is an example to understand working of website s and web application

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WebSite   It generates app code folder automatically and if you publish it on the server and after that if you do some changes in any particular file or page than you don t have to do compile all files   Web Application It generates solutions file automatically which website doesn t generate and if you change in one file than you have to compile full project to reflects its changes

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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

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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

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Web Site   use when the website is created by graphic designers and the programmers only edit one or two pages  Web Application   use when the application is created by programmers and the graphic designers only edit one or two paged images   Web Sites can be worked on using any HTML tools without having to have developer studio  as project files don   t need to be updated  etc  Web applications are best when the team is mostly using developer studio and there is a high code content    Some coding errors are found in Web Applications at compile time that are not found in Web Sites until run time    Warning    I wrote this answer many years ago and have not used Asp net since     I expect things have now moved on

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In a web application you can create the layers of your project s functionality and can create inter-dependencies between them by dividing it into many projects  but you can never do this on a website

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To summarize some of the answers above   Flexibility  can you can make live changes to a web page   Web Site  Possible  Pro  short term benefits  Con  long term risk of project chaos   Web App  Con  not possible  Edit a page  archive the changes to source control  then build and deploy the entire site  Pro  maintain a quality project   Development issues  Web Site  Simple project structure without a  csproj file Two  aspx pages may have the same class name without conflicts  Random project directory name leading to build errors like why  net framework conflicts with its own generated file and why  net framework conflicts with its own generated file  Pro  Simple  simplistic   Con  erratic   Web App  Project structure similar to WebForms project  with a  csproj file  Class names of asp pages must be unique  Pro  Simple  smart   Con  none  because a web app is still simple

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Website and Project  website are two different methods of creating ASP NET application using visual studio  One is projectless and another is project environment  Differences are as   Solution file is stored in same directory as root directory in project environment  Need to remove solution and project files before deploying in project environment  Complete root directory is deployed in projectless environment    there no much basic difference in using either approach  But if you are creating website that will take longer time  opt for project environment

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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

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WebSite   It generates app code folder automatically and if you publish it on the server and after that if you do some changes in any particular file or page than you don t have to do compile all files   Web Application It generates solutions file automatically which website doesn t generate and if you change in one file than you have to compile full project to reflects its changes

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This may sound a bit obvious  but I think it s something that is misunderstood because Visual nbsp Studio nbsp 2005 only shipped with the web site originally  If your project deals with a website that is fairly limited and doesn t have a lot of logical or physical separation  the website is fine  However if it is truly a web application with different modules where many users add and update data  you are better off with the web application   The biggest pro of the website model is that anything in the app code section is dynamically compiled  You can make C  file updates without a full redeploy  However this comes at a great sacrifice  A lot of things happen under the covers that are difficult to control  Namespaces are difficult to control and specific DLL usage goes out the window by default for anything under app code since everything is dynamically compiled   The web application model does not have dynamic compilation  but you gain control over the things that I have mentioned   If you are doing n-tier development  I highly recommend the web application model  If you are doing a limited web site or a quick and dirty implementation  the web site model may have advantages   More detailed analysis can be found in      Web Application Projects and Web Deployment Projects are here Web Site or Web Application

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This may sound a bit obvious  but I think it s something that is misunderstood because Visual nbsp Studio nbsp 2005 only shipped with the web site originally  If your project deals with a website that is fairly limited and doesn t have a lot of logical or physical separation  the website is fine  However if it is truly a web application with different modules where many users add and update data  you are better off with the web application   The biggest pro of the website model is that anything in the app code section is dynamically compiled  You can make C  file updates without a full redeploy  However this comes at a great sacrifice  A lot of things happen under the covers that are difficult to control  Namespaces are difficult to control and specific DLL usage goes out the window by default for anything under app code since everything is dynamically compiled   The web application model does not have dynamic compilation  but you gain control over the things that I have mentioned   If you are doing n-tier development  I highly recommend the web application model  If you are doing a limited web site or a quick and dirty implementation  the web site model may have advantages   More detailed analysis can be found in      Web Application Projects and Web Deployment Projects are here Web Site or Web Application

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Unless you have a specific need for a dynamically compiled project  don t use a web site project   Why  Because web site project will drive you up the wall when trying to change or understand your project  The static typing find features  e g  find usages  refactor  in Visual Studio will all take forever on any reasonably sized project  For further information  see the Stack nbsp Overflow question Slow    Find All References    in Visual Studio   I really can t see why they dropped web applications in Visual nbsp Studio nbsp 2005 for the pain-inducing  sanity-draining  productivity carbuncle web site project type

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Web Application project model   Provides the same Web project semantics as Visual Studio  NET  Web projects  Has a project file  structure based on project files   Build model - all code in the project is compiled into a single assembly  Supports both IIS and the built-in ASP NET Development Server  Supports all the features of Visual Studio 2005  refactoring  generics  etc   and of ASP NET   master pages  membership and login  site navigation  themes  etc   Using FrontPage Server Extensions  FPSE  are no longer a requirement    Web Site project model   No project file  Based on file system   New compilation model   Dynamic compilation and working on pages without building entire site on each page view  Supports both IIS and the built-in ASP NET Development Server  Each page has it s own assembly  Defferent code model

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Yes web application is much better than web sites  because Web applications give us freedom    To have multiple projects under one umbrella and establish project dependencies between  E g  for PCS we can have following within web application-   Web portals  Notification Controller  for sending Email   Business layer  Data Access layer  Exception Manager Server utility WCF Services  Common for all platforms  List item  To run unit tests on code that is in the class files that are associated with ASP NET pages To refer to the classes those are associated with pages and user controls from standalone classes To create a single assembly for the entire site Control over the assembly name and version number that is generated for the site To avoid putting source code on a production server   You can avoid deploying source code to the IIS server  In some scenarios  such as shared hosting environments  you might be concerned about unauthorized access to source code on the IIS server   For a web site project  you can avoid this risk by pre-compiling on a development computer and deploying the generated assemblies instead of the source code  However  in that case you lose some of the benefits of easy site updates   Performance Issue with Website The first request to the web site might require the site to be compiled  which can result in a delay  And if the web site is running on an IIS server that is short on memory  including the entire site in a single assembly might use more memory than would be required for multiple assemblies

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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

User · Answer

Website and Project  website are two different methods of creating ASP NET application using visual studio  One is projectless and another is project environment  Differences are as   Solution file is stored in same directory as root directory in project environment  Need to remove solution and project files before deploying in project environment  Complete root directory is deployed in projectless environment    there no much basic difference in using either approach  But if you are creating website that will take longer time  opt for project environment

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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

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Web Site is what you deploy to an ASP NET web server such as IIS  Just a bunch of files and folders  There   s nothing in a Web Site that ties you to Visual Studio  there   s no project file   Code-generation and compilation of web pages  such as  aspx   ascx   master  is done dynamically at runtime  and changes to these files are detected by the framework and automatically re-compiled  You can put code that you want to share between pages in the special App Code folder  or you can pre-compile it and put the assembly in the Bin folder   Web Application is a special Visual Studio project  The main difference with Web Sites is that when you build the project all the code files are compiled into a single assembly  which is placed in the bin directory  You don   t deploy code files to the web server  Instead of having a special folder for shared code files you can put them anywhere  just like you would do in class library  Because Web Applications contains files that are not meant to be deployed  such as project and code files  there   s a Publish command in Visual Studio to output a Web Site to a specified location   App Code vs Bin  Deploying shared code files is generally a bad idea  but that doesn   t mean you have to choose Web Application  You can have a Web Site that references a class library project that holds all the code for the Web Site  Web Applications is just a convenient way to do it   CodeBehind  This topic is specific to  aspx and  ascx files  This topic is decreasingly relevant in new application frameworks such as ASP NET MVC and ASP NET Web Pages which do not use codebehind files   By having all code files compiled into a single assembly  including codebehind files of  aspx pages and  ascx controls  in Web Applications you have to re-build for every little change  and you cannot make live changes  This can be a real pain during development  since you have to keep re-building to see the changes  while with Web Sites changes are detected by the runtime and pages controls are automatically recompiled   Having the runtime manage the codebehind assemblies is less work for you  since you don t need to worry about giving pages controls unique names  or organizing them into different namespaces   I   m not saying deploying code files is always a good idea  specially not in the case of shared code files   but codebehind files should only contain code that perform UI specific tasks  wire-up events handlers  etc  Your application should be layered so that important code always end up in the Bin folder  If that is the case then deploying codebehind files shouldn t be considered harmful   Another limitation of Web Applications is that you can only use the language of the project  In Web Sites you can have some pages in C   some in VB  etc  No need for special Visual Studio support  That   s the beauty of the build provider extensibility   Also  in Web Applications you don t get error detection in pages controls as the compiler only compiles your codebehind classes and not the markup code  in MVC you can fix this using the MvcBuildViews option   which is compiled at runtime   Visual Studio  Because Web Applications are Visual Studio projects you get some features not available in Web Sites  For instance  you can use build events to perform a variety of tasks  e g  minify and or combine Javascript files   Another nice feature introduced in Visual Studio 2010 is Web config transformation  This is also not available in Web Sites  Now works with Web Sites in VS 2013   Building a Web Application is faster than building a Web Site  specially for large sites  This is mainly because Web Applications do not compile the markup code  In MVC if you set MvcBuildViews to true then it compiles the markup code and you get error detection  which is very useful  The down side is that every time you build the solution it builds the complete site  which can be slow and inefficient  specially if you are not editing the site  l find myself turning MvcBuildViews on and off  which requires a project unload   On the other hand  with Web Sites you can choose if you want to build the site as part of the solution or not  If you choose not to  then building the solution is very fast  and you can always click on the Web Site node and select Build  if you   ve made changes   In an MVC Web Application project you have extra commands and dialogs for common tasks  like    Add View        Go To View        Add Controller     etc  These are not available in an MVC Web Site   If you use IIS Express as the development server  in Web Sites you can add virtual directories  This option is not available in Web Applications   NuGet Package Restore does not work on Web Sites  you have to manually install packages listed on packages config Package Restore now works with Web Sites starting NuGet 2 7

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From the MCTS self paced training kit exam 70-515 book      With web application  project           You can create an MVC application    Visual Studio stores the list of files in a project file   csproj or  vbproj   rather than relying on the folder structure    You cannot mix Visual Basic and C     You cannot edit code without stopping a debugging session    You can establish dependencies between multiple web projects    You must compile the application before deployment  which prevents you from testing a page if another page will not compile    You do not have to store the source code on the server    You can control the assembly name and version    You cannot edit individual files after deployment without recompiling

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One of the key differences is that Websites compile dynamically and create on-the-fly assemblies  Web applicaitons compile into one large assembly   The distinction between the two has been done away with in Visual nbsp Studio nbsp 2008

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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

User · Answer

This may sound a bit obvious  but I think it s something that is misunderstood because Visual nbsp Studio nbsp 2005 only shipped with the web site originally  If your project deals with a website that is fairly limited and doesn t have a lot of logical or physical separation  the website is fine  However if it is truly a web application with different modules where many users add and update data  you are better off with the web application   The biggest pro of the website model is that anything in the app code section is dynamically compiled  You can make C  file updates without a full redeploy  However this comes at a great sacrifice  A lot of things happen under the covers that are difficult to control  Namespaces are difficult to control and specific DLL usage goes out the window by default for anything under app code since everything is dynamically compiled   The web application model does not have dynamic compilation  but you gain control over the things that I have mentioned   If you are doing n-tier development  I highly recommend the web application model  If you are doing a limited web site or a quick and dirty implementation  the web site model may have advantages   More detailed analysis can be found in      Web Application Projects and Web Deployment Projects are here Web Site or Web Application

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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

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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

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Website  The Web Site project is compiled on the fly  You end up with a lot more DLL files  which can be a pain  It also gives problems when you have pages or controls in one directory that need to reference pages and controls in another directory since the other directory may not be compiled into the code yet  Another problem can be in publishing  If Visual Studio isn t told to re-use the same names constantly  it will come up with new names for the DLL files generated by pages all the time  That can lead to having several close copies of DLL files containing the same class name  which will generate plenty of errors  The Web Site project was introduced with Visual Studio 2005  but it has turned out not to be popular  Web Application  The Web Application Project was created as an add-in and now exists as part of SP 1 for Visual Studio 2005  The main differences are the Web Application Project was designed to work similarly to the Web projects that shipped with Visual Studio 2003  It will compile the application into a single DLL file at build time  To update the project  it must be recompiled and the DLL file published for changes to occur  Another nice feature of the Web Application project is it s much easier to exclude files from the project view  In the Web Site project  each file that you exclude is renamed with an excluded keyword in the filename  In the Web Application Project  the project just keeps track of which files to include exclude from the project view without renaming them  making things much tidier  Reference The article ASP NET 2 0 - Web Site vs Web Application project also gives reasons on why to use one and not the other  Here is an excerpt of it    You need to migrate large Visual Studio  NET 2003 applications to VS 2005  use the Web Application project  You want to open and edit any directory as a Web project without creating a project file  use Web Site project  You need to add pre-build and post-build steps during compilation  use Web Application project  You need to build a Web application using multiple Web projects  use the Web Application project  You want to generate one assembly for each page  use the Web Site project  You prefer dynamic compilation and working on pages without building entire site on each page view  use Web Site project  You prefer single-page code model to code-behind model  use Web Site project    Web Application Projects versus Web Site Projects  MSDN  explains the differences between the web site and web application projects  Also  it discusses the configuration to be made in Visual Studio

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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    lt    Page Language  C   AutoEventWireup  true  CodeBehind  Default aspx cs    Inherits  WebApplication  Default    gt      Web Site    lt    Page Language  C   AutoEventWireup  true  CodeFile  Default aspx cs  Inherits   Default    gt        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

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One of the key differences is that Websites compile dynamically and create on-the-fly assemblies  Web applicaitons compile into one large assembly   The distinction between the two has been done away with in Visual nbsp Studio nbsp 2008

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Websites - No solution file will be created  If we want to create websites no need for visual studio   Web Application - A solution file will be created  If we want to create web application should need the visual studio  It will create a single  dll file in bin folder

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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    lt    Page Language  C   AutoEventWireup  true  CodeBehind  Default aspx cs    Inherits  WebApplication  Default    gt      Web Site    lt    Page Language  C   AutoEventWireup  true  CodeFile  Default aspx cs  Inherits   Default    gt        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

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Definitely web application  single DLL file and easy to maintain  But a website is more flexible  you can edit the aspx file on the go

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Applications are usually compiled before deployment where as the website makes use of the app code  directory  When anything changes in the app code folder the server will re-compile the code  This means that you can add  change code  with a website on the fly   The advantage of an app is that there is no re-compiling and so initial start up times will be faster

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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

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Unless you have a specific need for a dynamically compiled project  don t use a web site project   Why  Because web site project will drive you up the wall when trying to change or understand your project  The static typing find features  e g  find usages  refactor  in Visual Studio will all take forever on any reasonably sized project  For further information  see the Stack nbsp Overflow question Slow    Find All References    in Visual Studio   I really can t see why they dropped web applications in Visual nbsp Studio nbsp 2005 for the pain-inducing  sanity-draining  productivity carbuncle web site project type

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From the MCTS self paced training kit exam 70-515 book      With web application  project           You can create an MVC application    Visual Studio stores the list of files in a project file   csproj or  vbproj   rather than relying on the folder structure    You cannot mix Visual Basic and C     You cannot edit code without stopping a debugging session    You can establish dependencies between multiple web projects    You must compile the application before deployment  which prevents you from testing a page if another page will not compile    You do not have to store the source code on the server    You can control the assembly name and version    You cannot edit individual files after deployment without recompiling

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I recommend you watch the video Web Application Projects  amp  Web Deployment Projects on the ASP NET website which explains the difference in great detail  it was quite helpful to me   By the way  don t get confused by the title  a great part of the video explains the difference between website projects and web application projects and why Microsoft re-introduced Web application projects in Visual studio 2005  as you probably already know  it originally shipped with only website projects then web application projects were added in SP1   A great video I highly recommend for anyone who wants to know the difference

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I recommend you watch the video Web Application Projects  amp  Web Deployment Projects on the ASP NET website which explains the difference in great detail  it was quite helpful to me   By the way  don t get confused by the title  a great part of the video explains the difference between website projects and web application projects and why Microsoft re-introduced Web application projects in Visual studio 2005  as you probably already know  it originally shipped with only website projects then web application projects were added in SP1   A great video I highly recommend for anyone who wants to know the difference

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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

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Applications are usually compiled before deployment where as the website makes use of the app code  directory  When anything changes in the app code folder the server will re-compile the code  This means that you can add  change code  with a website on the fly   The advantage of an app is that there is no re-compiling and so initial start up times will be faster

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Yes web application is much better than web sites  because Web applications give us freedom    To have multiple projects under one umbrella and establish project dependencies between  E g  for PCS we can have following within web application-   Web portals  Notification Controller  for sending Email   Business layer  Data Access layer  Exception Manager Server utility WCF Services  Common for all platforms  List item  To run unit tests on code that is in the class files that are associated with ASP NET pages To refer to the classes those are associated with pages and user controls from standalone classes To create a single assembly for the entire site Control over the assembly name and version number that is generated for the site To avoid putting source code on a production server   You can avoid deploying source code to the IIS server  In some scenarios  such as shared hosting environments  you might be concerned about unauthorized access to source code on the IIS server   For a web site project  you can avoid this risk by pre-compiling on a development computer and deploying the generated assemblies instead of the source code  However  in that case you lose some of the benefits of easy site updates   Performance Issue with Website The first request to the web site might require the site to be compiled  which can result in a delay  And if the web site is running on an IIS server that is short on memory  including the entire site in a single assembly might use more memory than would be required for multiple assemblies

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In Web Application Projects  Visual Studio needs additional  designer files for pages and user controls  Web Site Projects do not require this overhead  The markup itself is interpreted as the design

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Definitely web application  single DLL file and easy to maintain  But a website is more flexible  you can edit the aspx file on the go

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Website  The Web Site project is compiled on the fly  You end up with a lot more DLL files  which can be a pain  It also gives problems when you have pages or controls in one directory that need to reference pages and controls in another directory since the other directory may not be compiled into the code yet  Another problem can be in publishing  If Visual Studio isn t told to re-use the same names constantly  it will come up with new names for the DLL files generated by pages all the time  That can lead to having several close copies of DLL files containing the same class name  which will generate plenty of errors  The Web Site project was introduced with Visual Studio 2005  but it has turned out not to be popular  Web Application  The Web Application Project was created as an add-in and now exists as part of SP 1 for Visual Studio 2005  The main differences are the Web Application Project was designed to work similarly to the Web projects that shipped with Visual Studio 2003  It will compile the application into a single DLL file at build time  To update the project  it must be recompiled and the DLL file published for changes to occur  Another nice feature of the Web Application project is it s much easier to exclude files from the project view  In the Web Site project  each file that you exclude is renamed with an excluded keyword in the filename  In the Web Application Project  the project just keeps track of which files to include exclude from the project view without renaming them  making things much tidier  Reference The article ASP NET 2 0 - Web Site vs Web Application project also gives reasons on why to use one and not the other  Here is an excerpt of it    You need to migrate large Visual Studio  NET 2003 applications to VS 2005  use the Web Application project  You want to open and edit any directory as a Web project without creating a project file  use Web Site project  You need to add pre-build and post-build steps during compilation  use Web Application project  You need to build a Web application using multiple Web projects  use the Web Application project  You want to generate one assembly for each page  use the Web Site project  You prefer dynamic compilation and working on pages without building entire site on each page view  use Web Site project  You prefer single-page code model to code-behind model  use Web Site project    Web Application Projects versus Web Site Projects  MSDN  explains the differences between the web site and web application projects  Also  it discusses the configuration to be made in Visual Studio

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Web Application project model   Provides the same Web project semantics as Visual Studio  NET  Web projects  Has a project file  structure based on project files   Build model - all code in the project is compiled into a single assembly  Supports both IIS and the built-in ASP NET Development Server  Supports all the features of Visual Studio 2005  refactoring  generics  etc   and of ASP NET   master pages  membership and login  site navigation  themes  etc   Using FrontPage Server Extensions  FPSE  are no longer a requirement    Web Site project model   No project file  Based on file system   New compilation model   Dynamic compilation and working on pages without building entire site on each page view  Supports both IIS and the built-in ASP NET Development Server  Each page has it s own assembly  Defferent code model

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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

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To summarize some of the answers above   Flexibility  can you can make live changes to a web page   Web Site  Possible  Pro  short term benefits  Con  long term risk of project chaos   Web App  Con  not possible  Edit a page  archive the changes to source control  then build and deploy the entire site  Pro  maintain a quality project   Development issues  Web Site  Simple project structure without a  csproj file Two  aspx pages may have the same class name without conflicts  Random project directory name leading to build errors like why  net framework conflicts with its own generated file and why  net framework conflicts with its own generated file  Pro  Simple  simplistic   Con  erratic   Web App  Project structure similar to WebForms project  with a  csproj file  Class names of asp pages must be unique  Pro  Simple  smart   Con  none  because a web app is still simple

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Website  The Web Site project is compiled on the fly  You end up with a lot more DLL files  which can be a pain  It also gives problems when you have pages or controls in one directory that need to reference pages and controls in another directory since the other directory may not be compiled into the code yet  Another problem can be in publishing  If Visual Studio isn t told to re-use the same names constantly  it will come up with new names for the DLL files generated by pages all the time  That can lead to having several close copies of DLL files containing the same class name  which will generate plenty of errors  The Web Site project was introduced with Visual Studio 2005  but it has turned out not to be popular  Web Application  The Web Application Project was created as an add-in and now exists as part of SP 1 for Visual Studio 2005  The main differences are the Web Application Project was designed to work similarly to the Web projects that shipped with Visual Studio 2003  It will compile the application into a single DLL file at build time  To update the project  it must be recompiled and the DLL file published for changes to occur  Another nice feature of the Web Application project is it s much easier to exclude files from the project view  In the Web Site project  each file that you exclude is renamed with an excluded keyword in the filename  In the Web Application Project  the project just keeps track of which files to include exclude from the project view without renaming them  making things much tidier  Reference The article ASP NET 2 0 - Web Site vs Web Application project also gives reasons on why to use one and not the other  Here is an excerpt of it    You need to migrate large Visual Studio  NET 2003 applications to VS 2005  use the Web Application project  You want to open and edit any directory as a Web project without creating a project file  use Web Site project  You need to add pre-build and post-build steps during compilation  use Web Application project  You need to build a Web application using multiple Web projects  use the Web Application project  You want to generate one assembly for each page  use the Web Site project  You prefer dynamic compilation and working on pages without building entire site on each page view  use Web Site project  You prefer single-page code model to code-behind model  use Web Site project    Web Application Projects versus Web Site Projects  MSDN  explains the differences between the web site and web application projects  Also  it discusses the configuration to be made in Visual Studio

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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

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In a web application you can create the layers of your project s functionality and can create inter-dependencies between them by dividing it into many projects  but you can never do this on a website

[asp.net] ASP.NET Web Site or ASP.NET Web Application?

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