So, I was debugging things for over an hour and … like often in Microsoft things, nothing was wrong or amiss. I changed the web.config file to point to another appConfig file. It didn’t care! It just used the old web.config file from over an hour ago. Ideally ASP.NET picks up on the change, but every so oftern (I have noticed over 2+ years, one gets caught in believing that things are working OK. Yes the config settings ARE CACHED.

I was using web.config with all appSettings settings in there. Then I used a new web.config that abstracted it to Config/appSettings_myNewFile.config. I DID restart the IIS App Pool for the app and many other things. What finally got to me listen was just renaming the new .config files – nothing made a difference.

What a waste of time. My advice has always been

a) if companies want Microsoft – great for you the designer. $$. Bill hourly.

b) if you want something done – AVOID USING IT (except Excel and SQL Server) as so much time gets wasted solving issues that almost never exist.  That is why I personally use Macs (aka LINUX!!!!!!) and Linux servers for my own work.