Change address of click once deployment to Azure

Sometimes you would like to change the address where your application update. I searched the .net without finding an answer, or the answers said it was not possible. However I gave it a try and it works for me.

The situation I was facing was that my server hosting partner by accident erased all the data on my disks. Not so happy I cancelled the contract and moved everything I had to Azure. The only thing left was the client installation files.

Step by step guide:

You'll need an Azure storage acccount and a Storage Explorer like Cloud Storage Studio by Cerebrata.

Create a container in your Azure Storage named after your application.

In Visual Studio click the Publish tab in your project. Copy your old publishing folder location so you'll remember it and enter a local path instead (eg c:\temp\myapp\)

In Installation Folder URL, add the storage address + your containername (e.g. http://yourstoragename.blob.core.windows.net/myapp/)

Publish the application and then copy the installation files find under you local path to the storage account. If you use Cloud Storage Studio you can just drag the files and folders to your container.

Now, put your old publishing folder path back in Visual Studio but leave the installation folder instact and publish once again.

For the next release, dont forget to add the local path when publishing and to copy the new files to the cloud.

Thats it! As most things with Azure, it is really simple.