Installing a web site on a new server

Here are some blog posts that have been useful to me lately when I got caught out installing a website on a new server (I will eventually get that automated build and deploy process actually performing the deploy step successfully!!)

The configuration section ‘system.web.extensions’ cannot be read because it is missing a section declaration:

While installing a website on a new Windows Server I came across this error. In short, it was because the App Pool was set up as a .NET 2.0 application rather than a 4.0. The blog post explains what was going on and how to fix it.

[Resolved] Could not load file or assembly ‘XXXXX’ or one of its dependencies. An attempt was made to load a program with an incorrect format:

Although this didn’t help me in the end, it does suggest a solution. In my case, because of a third-party dependency that requires an x86 build, it couldn’t be used. In time that dependency will be removed, in the meantime the following was more helpful to me…

Could not load file or assembly ‘PresentationCore’ or one of its dependencies. An attempt was made to load a program with an incorrect format. : A solution:

This post did give me the pointer I needed to the setting that had to be changed to get the web site working.