How to: Customize the Default Web Page for a ClickOnce Application

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Note

This article applies to Visual Studio 2015. If you're looking for the latest Visual Studio documentation, see Visual Studio documentation. We recommend upgrading to the latest version of Visual Studio. Download it here

When publishing a ClickOnce application to the Web, a Web page is automatically generated and published along with the application. The default page contains the name of the application and links to install the application, install prerequisites, or access help on MSDN.

Note

The actual links that you see on the page depend on the computer where the page is being viewed and what prerequisites you are including.

The default name for the Web page is Publish.htm; you can change the name in the Project Designer. For more information, see How to: Specify a Publish Page for a ClickOnce Application.

The Publish.htm Web page is published only if a newer version is detected.

Note

Changes that you make to your Publish settings will not affect the Publish.htm page, with one exception: if you add or remove prerequisites after initially publishing, the list of prerequisites will no longer be accurate. You will need to edit the text for the prerequisite link to reflect the changes.

To customize the publish Web page

  1. Publish your ClickOnce application to a Web location. For more information, see How to: Publish a ClickOnce Application using the Publish Wizard.

  2. On the Web server, open the Publish.htm file in Visual Web Designer or another HTML editor.

  3. Customize the page as desired and save it.

  4. Optional. To prevent Visual Studio from overwriting your customized publish Web page, uncheck Automatically generate deployment web page after every publish in the Publish Options dialog box.

See Also

ClickOnce Security and Deployment
Publishing ClickOnce Applications
How to: Install Prerequisites with a ClickOnce Application
How to: Specify a Publish Page for a ClickOnce Application