How to deploy Umbraco to IIS or Azure App Service

Before you deploy: production settings

Create appsettings.Production.json for anything that differs from development:

{
  "Umbraco": {
    "CMS": {
      "Runtime": { "Mode": "Production" },
      "ModelsBuilder": { "ModelsMode": "Nothing" },
      "Hosting": { "Debug": false },
      "Global": { "UseHttps": true },
      "WebRouting": { "UmbracoApplicationUrl": "https://www.example.com/" }
    }
  }
}

• Runtime: Production makes Umbraco refuse unsafe settings, such as in-memory models or debug mode, at start-up.
• Use SourceCodeManual models in development and precompiled views. See Models Builder.
• Put the connection string in an environment variable named ConnectionStrings__umbracoDbDSN, not in the file.

Step 1: Publish

dotnet publish -c Release -o ./publish

The publish folder contains everything the server needs.

Option A: Windows Server with IIS

1. Install the .NET 10 Hosting Bundle on the server, then restart IIS with iisreset.
2. In IIS Manager, create an application pool with .NET CLR version set to No Managed Code.
3. Create a site pointing at your publish folder, using that pool, and add your HTTPS binding.
4. Give the pool's identity Modify permission on the folders Umbraco writes to:

$site = "C:\inetpub\mysite"
icacls "$site\umbraco" /grant "IIS AppPool\MySite:(OI)(CI)M"
icacls "$site\wwwroot\media" /grant "IIS AppPool\MySite:(OI)(CI)M"

1. Set environment variables for the site in web.config (<environmentVariables> under <aspNetCore>) or as system environment variables.

Option B: Azure App Service

az group create -n mysite-rg -l uksouth
az appservice plan create -n mysite-plan -g mysite-rg --sku P0v3 --is-linux
az webapp create -n mysite-web -g mysite-rg -p mysite-plan --runtime "DOTNETCORE:10.0"

az webapp config connection-string set -n mysite-web -g mysite-rg \
  -t SQLAzure --settings umbracoDbDSN="Server=tcp:...;Database=mysite;Authentication=Active Directory Default;"

cd publish && zip -r ../site.zip . && cd ..
az webapp deploy -n mysite-web -g mysite-rg --src-path site.zip --type zip

• Linux plans are usually cheaper than Windows ones. Umbraco 18 runs well on both. See our Windows to Linux service.
• Use Azure SQL, not SQLite, if you'll ever run more than one instance.
• Store media in Azure Blob Storage with the Umbraco.StorageProviders.AzureBlob package so it survives redeployments and scale-out.

Don't forget Data Protection keys

ASP.NET Core encrypts login cookies and anti-forgery tokens with Data Protection keys. If they're lost on every deployment, everyone is logged out and forms show errors. Persist them somewhere shared:

using Microsoft.AspNetCore.DataProtection;

builder.Services.AddDataProtection()
    .SetApplicationName("MySite")
    .PersistKeysToFileSystem(new DirectoryInfo("/home/data-protection-keys"));

On Azure, Azure.Extensions.AspNetCore.DataProtection.Blobs with Key Vault is the robust choice.

After deploying

1. Visit the site and log in to /umbraco.
2. Run Settings › Health Check.
3. Check the logs under Settings › Log Viewer for errors.