Question : publishing deleted my image folder

Hi,
When I publish a web application with VS2008, it first deleteds the current site.

I have one application that has an image folder with thousands of client files and is very large. These files only get uploaded onto the Live production site, so they dont exists in the dev version that I publish.
Each time I publish, I must first manually move the Live copy of the Images folder to a backup area, else it gets deleted

My question is: How can I publish my solution, but keep my 'images folder' safe. I have just done another publish and forgot to move the folder out, and as a result I need to restore a huge backup.

Arrrggghhhhh! - Please help so I dont do it again.

Answer : publishing deleted my image folder

I don't believe that is possible if you're using the "Delete existing files" option. You could turn that off, but that will open you up to including code that was not meant to be there. It can also lead to conflicts, in some situations.

What you can do (if you can open your target folder in Windows Explorer), is
1. Delete everything except your Images folder in the target folder
2. Publish locally
3. Manually copy the locally published content and folders to the target folder

This will leave your existing production Images folder intact.