ASP.NET MVC Areas with shared layout

Try this :

<%= Html.ActionLink("Back", "Index", "Home", new { area = "" }, null) %> 

When using Areas, you should always specify the area your are calling in your ActionLinks by adding a route value as above, If the link is outside the area (as in your case), just use an empty parameter for the area.

There's a nice extension that i find essential in any ASP.NET MVC project (T4MVC). It makes your ActionLinks look much cleaner and it protects them against errors.

So the above code will look something like this :

<%= Html.ActionLink("Back", MVC.Home.Index()) %>

and when using an area :

<%= Html.ActionLink("Some Link", MVC.Admin.SomeController.SomeAction()) %>

It's a part of the MvcContrib project on codeplex here

You should consider using it.

You don't use a file input control. Server side controls are not used in ASP.NET MVC. Checkout the following blog post which illustrates how to achieve this in ASP.NET MVC.

So you would start by creating an HTML form which would contain a file input:

@using (Html.BeginForm("Index", "Home", FormMethod.Post, new { enctype = "multipart/form-data" }))
{
    <input type="file" name="file" />
    <input type="submit" value="OK" />
}

and then you would have a controller to handle the upload:

public class HomeController : Controller
{
    // This action renders the form
    public ActionResult Index()
    {
        return View();
    }

    // This action handles the form POST and the upload
    [HttpPost]
    public ActionResult Index(HttpPostedFileBase file)
    {
        // Verify that the user selected a file
        if (file != null && file.ContentLength > 0) 
        {
            // extract only the filename
            var fileName = Path.GetFileName(file.FileName);
            // store the file inside ~/App_Data/uploads folder
            var path = Path.Combine(Server.MapPath("~/App_Data/uploads"), fileName);
            file.SaveAs(path);
        }
        // redirect back to the index action to show the form once again
        return RedirectToAction("Index");        
    }
}