Converting a Web Site Project to a Web Application Project
Differences between Web Site Projects (WSP) and Web Application Projects (WAP) are highlighted in blogs such as this one. Based on that, if you feel a WAP would be better for your particular needs than a WSP, but have already created a WSP, you may be asking yourself, “Can I convert my WSP into a WAP, without starting from scratch?”.
This posting explains how to convert an existing Web Site Project to a Web Application Project in Visual Studio 2010. The most striking differences to a Web Site Project are that WAPs have a project file to include and exclude files, and compile to a single assembly.
The guidelines below include several of the basic steps detailed in the Walkthrough: Converting a Web Site Project to a Web Application Project in Visual Studio. This is an excellent topic to review as it discusses some specific issues you may encounter which were discovered in previous versions of Visual Studio (VS). Please keep in mind while reading it that it is based on a WSP to WAP conversion using previous versions of Visual Studio...