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Welcome to the new IIS (Internet Information Server)
section Chances are, if you host websites on Windows NT or 2000, you're using IIS. Sure, some folks opt for Apache, but generally Apache/Win32 installations are thin on the ground - after all, IIS is free too, if you've already paid for the OS. In fact it's even installed with Server editions of Windows 2000. IIS is the home turf of ASP, and latterly ASP.NET, so if you're an ASP developer, chances are you're using IIS (again, we have alternative ASP platforms, but IIS is by far the most predominent). It's a very popular business server - since Microsoft is so deeply rooted in business, a very large number of corporate web servers run IIS - and is the preferred platform of many web agencies all over the world. Apache is still king of the web, but IIS is a strong pretender to the throne in many folks' views. I currently deploy 100% of my personal sites on IIS, and about 85% of my work sites.www.tartoos.com In this section, I'll be able to pass on some information which you may not know, or that you haven't got round to finding out yet. Hopefully you'll end up with a better functioning, more secure IIS installation. And make no mistake, even if you only have a humble 10-connection 'Personal' IIS, you'll still benefit from reading this section - security isn't just for professionals - it's for you too! I have articles planned on:www.tartoos.com
If you have suggestions for any other articles, feel free to let me know - as a member of the Microsoft MVP team for IIS, I'm well placed to help you out with your queries.
Content Redirection SO you want http://www.yoursite.com/somefolder/ to appear the same as http://www.yourothersite.com/? here's how you do it. I got asked this today on usenet, so I figured it was about time I showed you how it worked. I'll be demonstrating how it's done on my local IIS5.0 Server, but the method will work adequately on any IIS machine with any domain. For the purposes of the demo, I want a new virtual directory, http://archroy/pubguide/ to point to the same site as http://pubguide/. IIS can do this for you very easily. I already have a host header set up for each of these, so I've got no need to show you that. SO, the first thing I do is head off to the 'archroy' site in MMC and add a new virtual directory. I name it pubguide, and for now I just allow it to point to any old folder. I'll be changing this in a second.www.tartoos.com
This is simple. You've probably done this before. Now what we need to do is pull up the property sheet for this new virtual directory and change a couple of settings. Here's what you'll see.
Now check the 'redirection to a URL' checkbox. The sheet will change, and allow you to set the URL to redirect to, along with some other options. For the purposes of our article, you can leave the tickboxes unticked Now go to your browser and test it. I just type in http://archroy/pubguide/ and I get redirected to http://pubguide/ So what, you say, I could do that with the following default.asp page <% Response.Redirect("http://pubguide/") %> Sure you could. but can you do this : http://archroy/pubguide/content/pubs/rose.asp And get it redirected to the right page? No, you can't. But IIS can do this for you, simply by parsing the initial request header and using that information in the redirect. And of course, you can do this in reverse. Let's say your site is at http://somesite.com/somefolder, and you've bought a new domain name for it, you can set up a new site with that domain name and ask it to redirect to the subfolder-based site - and IIS will do it for you seamlessly. The procedure is basically the same, but you change the 'Home Directory' tab for the site, not for a virtual directory. |
