List of Alternative Options for Deploying or Hosting Applications to SharePoint 2007 or WSS 3.0

There are several different ways you can deploy an application to MOSS:

1. Create Custom built Web Parts and deploy them as features
2. Drop an ASP.NET application in c:\program files\common files\microsoft shared\web server extensions\12\template\layouts that gets virtualized to every site on your server
   e.g. to http://servername/sites/sitename/_layouts/MyApp/SomePage.aspx
3. Use User Controls and the Son of SmartPart (See http://www.smartpart.info/default.aspx)
4. Using ASPX pages added to SharePoint Site (this involves deploying to the bin folder of your SharePoint site such as C:\Inetpub\wwwroot\wss\VirtualDirectories\moss.litwareinc.com80\bin, Adding SafeControls Web.Config entries to allow your assemblies to load, and deploying your aspx to the relevant site.

For more info see

http://blogs.msdn.com/cjohnson/archive/2006/09/05/application-development-on-moss-2007-amp-wss-v3.aspx. It also has a very handy decision matrix when you are having trouble deciding which deployment model/architecture you should use.

There is also a list of 2 other options described here:

http://sharenotes.wordpress.com/2008/02/21/add-custom-aspx-pages-or-asp-net-pages-in-sharepoint/

1. Using features and WSP package: Following some steps as recommended by Andrew Connell (MOSS MVP). Here is the blog. I believe this is the standard approach users are using in the SharePoint developer community.
2. Using VSeWSS (Visual Studio extensions for WSS): This is yet another and latest solution. Microsoft recently released the VSeWSS 1.1 RTM. Using this, we can deploy all the asp .net pages into SharePoint by setting up a new project in Visual Studio. VSeWSS creates a solution package using features. Setup the project and hit ‘Deploy’ and it is done.