So I published my first MVC project today to my production server. I got this error:

Parser Error Message: Could not load file or assembly ‘System.Web.Mvc, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31BF3856AD364E35’ or one of its dependencies. The system cannot find the file specified.

After some quick research the solution was simple and obvious. Upon publishing the assemebly System.Web.Mvc.dll was not placed into the bin folder. We have two options:

1). Find the DLL in your project folder and copy it to the production server
2). Set the “Copy Local” property on the DLL to TRUE. This can be done by browsing to the References folder in the Web project, clicking on System.Web.Mvc and pulling up the properties, select the property “Copy Local” and make sure its set to True. Perform another publish and you should be ready to go!