When I have a Windows VM, how do I upload my website to it? [closed]

This is a really stupid question, I know, but I have literally zero experience on setting up a website/web app from the server level - I've always used a third party like Arvixe or GoDaddy. So, I have an Azure VM that I can remote into. I need to (obviously) set up my website on it. I've already installed IIS, so I would imagine that the website would go into the

inetpub > wwwroot

folder, right? Does one usually just copy and paste the files over, FTP, etc.? What's the typical, accepted way to "upload" your website/web app to your VM?

There is none - different people do different things. Depends on scaling. I never use wwwroot - I always leave that alone, stop the default website, make a new one. I rarely manually deploy - deployment is automatic.

When I manually deploy, it is often copy/paste via remote desktop or a file share. But then, most things I deploy are local portals for our internal application servers.

One advice - never upload a live website remote. This takes time - and you are down.

Upload to a staging folder, then run a script that deletes a backup folder, stops the site, renames current folder to backup, staging to current, starts the site, creates new staging folder.

This way your site is down a LOT less.