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.