What is a Web Application?

By default, your root directory is set up as an application root or application starting point. However, you can run more than one application on your web site.

Every file and directory that is beneath the "starting point" directory in your Web site is considered part of the application until another "starting point" directory is found.

With each application, IIS will have its own application object accessible through ASP or ASP.net. You can configure application start and end behavior within either global.asa or global.asax. (Note that global.asa and global.asax can only exist in an application root).

To create a web application, you can use the Application Starting Point tool in Control Panel.

Visual Studio .NET Users

If you use Visual Studio .NET, each project under the root (e.g., http://www.HostingAccountDomain.com/webapplication) is set up as an application. VS.net will automatically create the application root when you create or copy a project. See the Knowledge Base article; How to deploy a Visual Studio 2008/2005 or Visual Web Developer 2008/2005 web project from my local computer to the Smarterasp.net servers for more details.