title: How to configure Web Deploy publishing feature on IIS so developer can publish?
body: <p>I control a server running IIS 8 on Windows Server 2012.  I want to publish a few basic asp.net websites with the Publish option in Visual Studio 2012.  There are no good/current Microsoft articles on the server configuration steps.</p>
  
  <p>1) What exactly do I need to do on the server?  I don't see any "web deploy" role option under the various IIS roles.  I have read of some people downloading and installing "Web Deploy 3.0" from Microsoft but that file is one year old and it seems strange that I would have to download another file to use a promoted IIS file deployment option.  If you are using IIS7 or IIS7.5 instead of IIS8 like me, please feel free to reply what YOU do, but let me know what version you are using.</p>
  
  <p>2) Is the authentication process encrypted?  For example, FTP would send passwords in plain text.  FTP over SSL doesn't but setting up even a self-issued SSL cert is annoying just to get secure authentication.  So what about Web Deploy?  Is it safe or no?</p>
  
  <p>3) Must I open port 8172 on the server's firewall?  Microsoft's documentation says I "might need to".  </p>
  
  <p>4) On the Visual Studio side, it wants an account for authentication.  Is this a Windows account on the server?  Should I then right click the IIS website folder on the server and add this user there or is there some other preferred way of mapping users to websites? If so, what rights are required?</p>
  
  <p>Please answer any or all of the above but please focus on the server side configuration and not the client (visual studio).  Please don't suggest FTP as I am truly wanting to try Web Deploy.  I am adding an IIS 7.5 tag too since some of the answers may be the same as for IIS 8.</p>