Keep IIS Express Running in Visual Studio 2013

Since upgrading to Visual Studio 2013 I’ve noticed a change in behaviour in IIS.  It still starts up when you start debugging a web project – same as it always has – but since the upgrade it automatically shuts down when you stop debugging.

As with most IDE behaviour, I was pretty familiar with the old way and so I found it incredibly frustrating whenever this happened.  The good news is that there’s a very simple solution: disable Edit and Continue for the project in the Properties dialog.

edit continue

Hopefully this will save someone else some pain!