Maintaining .NET web application

I am considering using .NET MVC for my next web app but one of the requirements is that there should be minimum work involved from the clients side (who will be maintaining the site).

They are used to simple HTML sites where all they have to do in order to make a minor change is to modify an html in notepad and upload it.

What parts of an .NET web app needs to be comp开发者_JAVA百科iled? Is it only the .cs parts of it?

Can all the rest be updated freely by modifying files with e.g. notepad?

Also, in an MVC environment, is more of the view related code in compiled files?

How is this kind of maintenance usually done in such cases where the client will take over the site on delivery (and are not interested in needing VS installed and needing to compile!)?

If you really need a web application, then in order to make changes to the 'application' part, they're going to need to be able to recompile.

If they're going to make visual changes, then your best bet is to provide a method for them to edit the HTML of the site. You can make changes to the views (.aspx files) in ASP.NET MVC without having to recompile. If you make changes to your controllers or your Model, then you'll have to recompile.

If this is a major requirement for your client, you can build the site using ASP.Net Web Forms instead of ASP.NET MVC in which case changes to the .cs files will be compiled on the fly when the page is first accessed. Note that this only applies to the .cs files in your Web Forms project. Any .cs files in referenced assemblies will need to be pre-compiled.

That said, I suspect your client is primarily interested in modifying the look/feel/content of a page, so they would probably be satisfied modifying the .aspx files in either a Web Forms or MVC app. If they have the budget for it, sounds like the best solution is to build a Content Management System, so they don't have to edit files ever again.