Configuring IIS Web Server

The ASP .NET pages can also be hosted through apache but it requires a hell lot of configurations and changes. An alternate version is IIS web server that comes already installed with your windows OS.
Vista OS has an already installed IIS web sever. One just needs to turn the feature on, through control panel. In XP OS you need to install it through XP CD.

Never try to configure IIS on Vista Basic you will land no where in the end. The OS is not provided with the complete package. ISAPI filters cannot be installed correctly on Vista Basic. Certain features of ISAPI filters need to be checked while hosting the website. The safest option is to configure the server on XP.

The steps for configuring it are:

• Turn the IIS feature on through control panel.
• Check installation by typing 'http://localhost:80/' in your browser. IIS page will appear.
• Goto run and type inetmgr. This makes a window pop up. Window is that of IIS Manager.
• The next step would be to create a virtual directory for an existing physical directory. For this you need to expand the Web Sites item in the IIS tree, right-click the Default WebSite item and choose New -> Virtual Directory from the menu.
• Then comes the virtual directory creation wizard. The first step in the wizard is to choose an alias. The alias is the name, a user will use, in his URL to access the files in this virtual directory.
• The next step in the wizard is to provide an existing physical directory to which the virtual directory will point to. So, this physical directory will be exposed as a virtual directory through its alias.
• The final step in this wizard is to choose your permissions for the virtual directory. Usually, to host an ASP.NET application, read and execute permissions are enough. Of course, in order to fulfill your needs you can choose other permissions too.
  

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Installing apache on windows

Instalation:

First thing you need is to download the webserver. Now for windows users you will have to go for the .exe . The apache website is www.apache.org. You have to head to the apache binaries sections for Win32. I believe it is at http://www.apache.org/dist/httpd/binaries/win32/
There you will be able to download a version of apache.

Now before you download it you have to make a folder. This folder is one which serves as the root directory. Now if you don't want to do this it's ok. You can use the default path if you want. But usually this helps in setting up other things like php, and MySQL. Most people create a folder in the C:\ directory called WWW or somthin. You can name it whatever you want.

Ok so you have downloaded the Apache Web Server and ready to go with the setup. The version I have downloaded was apache_2.0.36-win32-x86-no_ssl.msi. This was a newer version and supposedly supposed to be more secure.

• The first screen you get when your in the setup is the welcome screen, we don't care much about that.

• The next screen is the terms and service. And yes you are going to agree to the terms.

• The next screen is some documentation. I never really read it but if you want go ahead and do it.

• Now we see a screen that says enter a network domain. Erase what's in there and type localhost.

• Now the next box says Servername, erace what is ever in the box and put in localhost.

• The next is Administrators e-mail address. Go ahead and fill that in. But make sure to change it.

• Pick radio button that best suites your needs.

• Now that we got that all filled out. Hit Next and you'll go to a screen that asks you which type of install you want to do. Then hit next.

If you wanted to server out of your one special folder. Change the file location where you were going to install apache. Or just leave it as the default path. Click install and it should be on it's way. Once it's done installing hit the finish button.

The test:
First were gonna check to see if Apache installed correctly.
This is how we do it. Open up Internet Explorer and type in " http://localhost" . If everything went smooth then you should be seeing a message that looks like this" Seeing this instead of the website you expected?" Yippee!!!
Apache is working.

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