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I have recently started using a shared-host for my clients so see project progress or to play with a new technology for myself. I seems like every time I deploy a new project that runs fine locally, I run into something new on the shared-host.

Do you have a shared hosting deployment checklist?

What are the common problems you run into when deploying to a shared host?

rick schott
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  • Please don't continuously edit the question with the current top ten list every time someone answers or votes. We can see the "list" by looking at the answers sorted by votes. – gnovice Sep 21 '09 at 17:03
  • This is a community wiki, edit what you don't like. – rick schott Sep 21 '09 at 17:21
  • The point is **not** editing too much. There isn't really a need for you to keep a list in the question that you constantly update. The ordering of the answers by vote essentially *is* the list. Every time you edit the question, it bumps it to the top of the active list, which gets obnoxious if it's done too often (and for unneccessary reasons). – gnovice Sep 21 '09 at 17:47
  • @gnovice - this isn't true I don't believe. It can only get bumped every so often. – womp Sep 21 '09 at 19:10

5 Answers5

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Medium Trust. If you are developing code to go into a shared host, you should set your local application to run in medium trust otherwise you can almost guarantee you'll get security issues with code that executes fine in full trust but dies in a medium trust environment.

This MSDN article explains about medium trust in more detail:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms998341.aspx

lomaxx
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They don't always offer you direct access to the database (Enterprise Manager / Management Studio).

You end up using some weird web GUI for creating database entities, which does not accept otherwise valid SQL syntax and you have to update all your queries and stored procedures to accommodate their custom changes and restrictions.

3

One of mine is file IO permission problems. An example being writing to a file on the web server from ASP.NET. You have to use a provided online tool to allow permission to do more than reads.

rick schott
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    A lot of web hosts have some interface for managing this but it's often buried in a weird, impossible-to-use backend "manager" tool. – Rex M Sep 21 '09 at 16:54
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No preview site.

That is, a host based path to your web application without actually pointing the DNS to it.

Example:

http://www234.your-shared-host.com/preview/user/bla/default.aspx (don't try it, it's just an example..)

Ron Klein
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Inconvenient cancellation procedure

In some of the shared hosts I used, I found out that for cancellation I must make a phone call. Nothing over the web, not even an email.

I bet the host thinks most people won't bother calling until it's really needed. They're right.

Ron Klein
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