Choosing a Hosting Environment

Before diving into the technical steps, it's essential to choose the right hosting environment for your .NET Forum. You have several options.

• On-Premises Server: Hosting the application on your physical servers.
• Cloud Hosting: Using cloud providers like Microsoft Azure, AWS, or Google Cloud.
• Shared Hosting: Using a shared hosting provider is suitable for smaller applications with lower traffic.

Each option has its advantages and trade-offs, such as control, scalability, cost, and maintenance requirements.

Preparing Your Forum for Deployment

Configuring Application Settings

Ensure that your Forum is configured for the production environment. This involves:

• Updating connection strings to point to your database.
• Setting environment-specific variables.
• Configuring logging and monitoring settings.

{
  "ConnectionStrings": { 
    "SnitzConnection": "Server=.\\SQL2019;Database=SnitzMVC;Trusted_Connection=True;MultipleActiveResultSets=true;TrustServerCertificate=true",
    "HangfireConnection": "Server=.\\SQL2019;Database=SnitzMVC;Trusted_Connection=True;MultipleActiveResultSets=true;TrustServerCertificate=true",
    "DBProvider": "mssql"
  },

  "SnitzForums": {
    "forumTablePrefix": "FORUM_",
    "memberTablePrefix": "FORUM_",
    "LanguageConnectionString": "SnitzConnection",
    "strVersion": "",
    "strForumUrl": "https://yourservername/",
    "strForumDescription": "Short description about your Forums",
    "strForumTitle": "Name of your Forums",
    "strCopyright": "{0} H Reddick",
    "strUniqueId": "SnitzCore00",
    "excludeBots": "googlebot,bing,duckduck,yahoo,spider,bot,facebook,netEstate,Not-A.Brand,barkrowler",
    "SupportedLanguages": [ "en", "no", "fa" ],
    "Log4NetCleanupTime": 3, //Log file cleanup Job will run daily at 3am
    "Log4NetCleanupOlderThan": 7, //Log files older than 7 days will be deleted
    "VirtualPath": "" //Set automatically
    "LandingPage": ""
  },

  "MailSettings": {
    "From": "name@youremail.com",
    "UserName": "",
    "Password": "",
    "RequireLogin": false,
    "SmtpServer": "mailserver address",
    "Port": 25,
    "SecureSocketOptions": "StartTls"
  },
  "IdentityOptions": {
    "User": {
      "AllowedUserNameCharacters": "abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ0123456789-._@+",
      "RequireUniqueEmail": false
    },
    "Password": {
      "RequiredLength": 10, 
      "RequireDigit": true,
      "RequiredUniqueChars": 4,
      "RequireLowercase": true,
      "RequireNonAlphanumeric": false,
      "RequireUppercase": true
    }
  },
  "Logging": {
    "LogLevel": {
      "Default": "Warning",
      "Hangfire": "Information"
    }
  },
  "AllowedHosts": "*"
}

Make sure to use secure methods for storing sensitive information, such as secrets and API keys.

Setting Up a Web Server

For web applications, you'll need a web server to handle HTTP requests. Popular choices include.

• IIS (Internet Information Services): Common for Windows servers.
• Apache or Nginx: Common for Linux servers, often used as reverse proxies for .NET applications.

For example, if you're using IIS, you'll need to configure an IIS website or application pool to host your .NET application. You can use the IIS Manager to create a new site, point it to your published application's folder, and configure the necessary settings like bindings and authentication. If using Shared Hosting your web host should have set this up for you.

Deploying the Forum

Copying Files to the Server

The next step is to copy the application files to the server. This can be done using various methods:

• FTP/SFTP: Using tools like FileZilla or WinSCP to transfer files.
• SSH: Securely copying files via SCP.
• CI/CD Pipelines: Automating deployment using CI/CD tools like Azure DevOps, GitHub Actions, or Jenkins.

Configuring the Forum

After transferring the files, ensure that any server-specific configurations are set up. This might include.

• Setting environment variables.
• Configuring file permissions.
• Setting up SSL certificates for secure communication.