The FTP In Copy Web Site is Slow!

Although Visual Web Developer 2008 makes it convenient to connect to a remote site, doing so with the built-in FTP client is a pain in the butt. There's something wrong with the VS-embedded module that handles FTP transfers. Am I the only one seeing slow screen painting and refresh in this client app? It's like everything is working at quarter speed on a single thread. It comes to a dead stop for no reason.

It's unfortunate to see such a poor implementation dragging down a fine developer tool. It's not like FTP is new technology. My ancient version of WS_FTP is far more efficient than the transfer software in VWD 2008.

The Copy Web Site/FTP feature deserves a hotfix, and if that's not possible, I hope Microsoft can address it in the first Visual Studio 2008/Visual Web Developer service pack.

10 Comments

  • www.dispatchasp.net

    Best. Add-in. Ever.

  • This has been such a huge beef for me over the years. I had the same problems with VS2005.

    I pray someone at MS fixes this.

  • Yup, same slowness in VS 2005 and 2008.
    I've been using DreamWeaver MX 2004 to sync files once VS creates them.
    I'd love to see that sort of synchronization system in VS.

  • Yup...I just started trying to use this feature in VS 2008 and it's painfully slow -- to the point it's useless.

    It's not just you. (sigh)

  • I also feel that the FTP support in Visual Studio is almost useless. Can't save passwords, don't support SFTP and as many have said, it is slow.

    Hopefully Microsoft fixes this.

  • Yes, Visual Studio FTP really sucks. It really cripples developers, and is surprising since the rest of the IDE is fabulous.

  • The FTP support is worse than useless as it would be better if it did not even exist - reducing the support headache that comes when people try to use it and it hangs or crawls along at excruciatingly slow speeds.

  • I have both Visual Studio 2005 and Visual Studio 2008.

    When I use Build/Publish Web Site (FTP) in VS2005, its very quick, less 30 seconds.

    When I use Build/Publish Web Site (FTP) in VS2008, its only partially done after 5 minutes.

    I can't figure it out.

    By the way Ken, I found your book useful and interesting. Thanks.

  • It's been driving me crazy. Not only is it pathetically slow, when I updated from VWD 2008 to VWD 2008 SP1, it seemed to forget all my associations, and now it thinks my remote and local sites are no longer synchronized, and wants me to copy one entire site to the other. Thanks, MS.

  • Yes Ken - FTP is painfully slow - why I ended up googling this and landing on your page.

    I use FrontPage for uploading and editing live pages, for all its quirks at least its relatively fast.

    So please Microsoft fix FTP in VWDE 2010 and let users connect to website at same time.

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