Part 9 : Windows Azure Web Sites - Deployment Options

In the last tutorial we have created one web site in Windows Azure, but so for our web site is empty. We need to add some content to it. But before adding content let's see what all options are out there to deploy your source code to Windows Azure Web Sites. With Windows Azure Website, deployment of new and existing web sites is very quick and flexible.

1. Upload your content through FTP.
2. Publish from Web Matrix
   WebMatrix is a free, lightweight, cloud-connected web development tool. WebMatrix 3 brings you easy access to your Windows Azure websites. You can access your remote sites as seamlessly as local sites. 
3. Publish from Visual Studio
   You can publish your Azure application to Azure directly from Visual Studio. Microsoft made it very easy so that any developer can deploy his website easily on the cloud. 
4. Dropbox
   Dropbox is a free service that lets you bring your photos, docs, and videos anywhere and share them easily. You can simply put the source code into the local dropbox folder and it will quickly synchronize and deployed to Windows Azure.
5. Local Git Repository
   You can directly publish source code from your local Git Repository to Windows Azure and your site will go  live quickly and automatically.
6. GitHub
   GitHub is a web-based hosting service for software development projects that use the Git revision control system. From Windows Azure web site you can connect to any branch of GitHub project associated with your account.
7. Bitbucket
   Bitbucket is a web-based hosting service for projects that use either the Mercurial or Git revision control systems. Bitbucket includes an issue tracker, a wiki, and integration with popular  services such as Basecamp, Flowdock, and Twitter.
8. CodePlex
   CodePlex is an open source project hosting website from Microsoft. It allows shared development of open source software. To integrate with Windows Azure , your project must use Git ot Mercurial as the source control provider.

As you can see there are many deployment options are available and each of them has it's own advantages.

Also it depends on your needs which one you choose to choose.

We will be covering all of the above options in details in coming chapters, but at least for now our main concentration will be on publishing from Visual Studio. Visual Studio and Web matrix gives you option to publish the content directly from the tool. This way of deployment isn't good when you are working with other team members. It's difficult to track changes and there is no way to rollback to previous version. But it's best while you are learning and playing with Windows Azure.