What is the difference between a website and a virtual directory

asp.net virtual-directory
Panache picture Panache · Sep 14, 2009 · Viewed 7.6k times · Source

What is the difference between a website and a virtual directory?

Answer

user1228 picture user1228 · Sep 14, 2009

You're comparing Red Delicious apples to Granny Smiths.

A website is an application served over the internet using the HTTP protocol, primarily consisting of pages holding different types of content (text, images, videos, etc).

A virtual directory is a way that IIS maps a directory on your hard drive to a website. The virtual directory becomes part of the URL. For instance, if you have a web server

www.c_ntoso.com

and it has a virtual directory

foo

that maps to

c:\foo\

on the web server, you can see the web page

c:\foo\bar.html

via the url

www.c_ntoso.com/foo/bar.htm

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