Website Administration Tool in Visual Studio 2013

by | Jun 7, 2014 | Development, Tidbit

Recently I updated from Visual Studio 2012 Pro to Visual Studio 2013 Pro. While working on a website with Asp.Net and MySql, I was looking for the Website Administration Tool. As you can guess, it was missing under the Website [Website –> Asp.Net Properties] option.

Now I depend on that tool to create the initial settings for a bunch of options. Here is how I was able to get into the tool.

Step1: Get the Port Number

First step is to get the Port Number on which your application will be running.

  1. The easiest way to do that is to open your project in Visual Studio.
  2. Highlight the Website in your Solution Explorer.
  3. Select the Properties Tab.
  4. In the URL option [under Development Web Server], you will find the port number after “http://localhost:”

The Port Number in my example is: 58814

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Step 2: Start the IIS Express

The Second step is to start the Development Website with Asp.Net Web Admin Files.

  1. Open a new Command Prompt
  2. Browse to the location where IIS Express is installed on your machine. Usually “C:Program FilesIIS Express”
  3. Type the following command:
    1. iisexpress.exe /path:C:WindowsMicrosoft.NETFrameworkv4.0.30319ASP.NETWebAdminFiles /vpath:”/ASP.NETWebAdminFiles” /port:[port] /clr:4.0 /ntlm
    2. Replace the [port] with your actual port number
  4. This will start the IIS Express in the command prompt

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Step 3: Open the Website Administration Tool in your Web Browser

Last step is to just open the Website Administation Tool in your Web Browser.

  1. To start the tool you will need the location of the Solution file on your machine
  2. In the string below, replace the [port] with the Port # from Step 1 and [location] with the location of the Solution file.
    1. http://localhost:[port]/asp.netwebadminfiles/default.aspx?applicationPhysicalPath=[location]&applicationUrl=/
  3. Put the url in Web Browser and the Website Administration Tool should open for you

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