Before starting this article, let's understand something about Microsoft Azure. It is a cloud computing platform and infrastructure, created by Microsoft, for building, deploying and managing applications and services using a global network of Microsoft-managed datacenters.
This article we will get to understand how to deploy/ host your website in Microsoft Azure. (This is the demo of one static website that contains only HTML, CSS and JavaScript files. You can also deploy a web application and link your database with it.) The prerequisites for this are:
- Your developed website file folder.
- Microsoft Azure Account.
- Dropbox Account.
Now let's start with a Microsoft Azure account. Open your Microsoft Azure account and select web app on the left hand side of the account, then select the NEW option placed in the lower side of the Account and create your website with the name you want to give (let's have a look).
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Then see your dashboard, it will have the same name file as you created, click on that and you will find the website on the next tab. Then browse to the website to see the content in it.
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Look at the website. Open it, it has a description of how to publish or deploy the website. So according to Microsoft Azure let's try each way one by one.
- Visual Studio.
- FTP or your favorite development tool.
- Dropbox.
Start with Visual Studio
If you fully develop your website and are ready to host it then go to the Solution Explorer, right-click on the website content then select publish website. Then a Publish Web window will appear, follow the procedure specified below.
Step 1
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Step 2
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Step 3
If you choose Web deploy form publish method then you need to do the following.
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If you choose FTP form publish method then you must do the following to do it. You can get all the information required for FTP deployment form your Azure account.
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Step 4
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Step 5
In this step you must wait for the successful completion of the work.
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FTP: (We have already seen FTP deployment from Visual Studio)
To host the website using FTP we need one FTP Client like: File Zilla and so on. Take the FTP host name, Username, word from Azure account. Then provide the information correctly and start the process of uploading the website file folder. This FTP client has one local site and one server site. So select the file folder from the local site and the folder in which the file will be uploaded from the server site. Then wait for the process to complete. After successful completion of the process, click the browse button of the website from the Azure account.
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Dropbox: As I said previously about the prerequisites for deployment, you just need your username/email and the word to link your dropbox with your Azure account to deploy your website directly. Just select the setup deployment from the source control option from your Azure account. Then select option window will pop up, just select Dropbox and accept/allow it to link to your account. After allowing Azure to access your dropbox, automatically one app with an Azure folder will be created in your dropbox. Then put your website content folder in it (App/Azure/your website content folder). It will be automatically shown in the dropdown list to select the folder, just select it and continue your process.
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After your selection of the folder and publish it, the following sets of screens appear to notify the process of deployment. Then browse the website by clicking the browse button and see your website.
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Note: You can now browse your website with the name of the website azurewebsites.net.