Publishing web sites

I have been using .net for some years now - before that, traditional ASP.

When I publish a web site (not application) to a test server or live server on our network, I always tick the boxes to 'allow this precompiled site to be updateable' and 'Use fixed naming and single page assemblies'. So far, so good. I did this because I liked the idea that, like traditional ASP, you could maybe update just one page if you had a bug to fix.

The thing is - can you update just one page? I have never tried it - I have always published the whole site to the test server and then, when the users are happy, publish the whole site to the live server.

Now I have an issue on the live server that I need to resolved. But the development site and test site are way out of kilter due to ongoing development. I've been under a lot of pressure lately and version control is out of kilter.

The files on the test server (the .aspx file and its dll) and the live server have exactly the same names. Can I simply copy a file and its dll from the test server and drop them into the appropriate directories on the live server and copy over the files already there? Will this work? Or will some dependency be lost that isn't immediately obvious?

Sorry to ask such a 'novices' question but when I made the transition for traditional asp to .net I never made much sense of the documentation regarding publishing.

Theoretically it works but practically i can only vouch for the .aspx part and not the dll part. See there is a little thing called application pool on IIS that is known to mess up these attempts, although i am not sure about having the exact same naming of dll files. You may found out that some pages work but others don't. Anyhow since i only publish the full site after major updates and i am forced to re deploy security and links i suggest you give it a go on a test machine and let us know.

Yep you can just upload the .aspx page and associated .dll to the bin. If you have made changes to code files in the app_code folder then upload the app.dll as well. I'd suggest making a copy of the files on the server to be replaced and if something goes wrong you can revert back.