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Hack 40 Secrets of Web Site Hosting with Internet Information Services (IIS)

XP Professional includes a free, built-in web
server. If you're planning on using it, check out
these tips to improve your site's performance, cut
down on bandwidth, deliver pages faster, and reduce Page Not Found
errors.

If you've
wanted to host a web server but
don't want to go to the trouble of configuring a
separate machine and server, XP Professional has help for you.
Windows XP Professional comes with Internet Information Services
(IIS) Version 5.1, which lets you host web sites and FTP sites and
run a

Simple
Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) service for sending email. (The Home
Edition doesn't include any of these capabilities.)
It's not something you'll use to
build a substantial web site, because it has some significant
drawbacks. The web server and FTP server allow only 10 simultaneous
connections, for example, and the SMTP server isn't
a full-blown mail server; it can only act as a relay.

Still, if you want to host a small web site for friends, family, or
only for internal use for a small business, or if you want to build a
"staging server" to test out sites
before publicly posting them on a different server, IIS is a good
bet.

IS
isn't installed by default in XP Professional. To
install it, choose Control Panel Add or Remove Programs
Add/Remove Windows Components and, from the Windows
Component Wizard that appears, highlight Internet Information
Services (IIS) and click on Details.

Administer your web site by
using the Microsoft
Management Console (MMC) IIS snap-in. Choose Control Panel
Administrative Tools and double-click on Internet Information
Services. The console tree, shown in Figure 4-11,
shows the structure of your web and FTP sites and also gives you
control over those sites.

Figure 4-11. The console tree for the MMC IIS snap-in

In this hack, I'll assume that you know the basics
of building a web site with IIS, so I'll instead
clue you in to secrets of IIS.

4.9.1 Change the Directory and Do a Redirect

By default, IIS uses the
C:\Inetpub\wwwroot directory for your web site.
However, you'll most likely want to change that
directory to one that better matches your own PC setup. To change it,
launch the MMC snap-in as detailed earlier in
this hack, then right-click on Default Web Site and choose the Home
Directory tab, shown in Figure 4-12. In the Local
Path box, type in or browse to the directory you want to use.

Figure 4-12. The Default Web Site Home Directory tab

If you want to use a directory on another computer located on the
network, select "A share located on another
computer." The Local Path box changes to Network
Directory, and the Browse button changes to a Connect As button. Type
in the directory information from the other computer, then click on
Connect As to use your logon credentials to use the network share.

This tab also lets you do
a redirect of your web site so that
when someone visits your web site
they'll be redirected to another site. That site
doesn't have to be on your network; it can be any
location on the Internet. This option is most useful when you move
your web site to another URL but want those who use the old URL to be
able to access it. To do a redirect, select "A
redirection to a URL." The screen will change to the
screen shown in Figure 4-13.

Figure 4-13. Redirecting to a URL

You have three options for your redirect:

The exact URL entered above

This redirects all traffic to the URL you specified.

A directory below this one

This lets you
force a redirect of a parent directory to a child directory. For
example, if someone were to type www.mysite.com in their browser, and you
wanted them to end up at www.mysite.com/pics, you'd
choose this option and have the location www.mysite.com/pics in the
"Redirect to" box.

A permanent redirection for this resource

When this option
is chosen, a " 301 Permanent
Redirect" message will be sent to the visiting
browser. This can be used by some browsers to automatically update
their bookmarks or Favorites list with your new site location.

4.9.2 Redirect Incorrect Incoming URLs

They're
the bugaboo of every web site
administratorpeople who mistype URLs and get the dreaded
"404 The page cannot be found"
error. For example, if someone wanted to visit http://www.gralla.com/mybio, but instead
typed http://www.gralla.com/myboi into their
browser, they'd get an error message. And
I'd lose a visitor.

Solve the problem with URLSpellCheck
for IIS (http://www.port80software.com/products/urlspellcheck/).
It redirects misspelled URLs to the right page, so that your visitors
don't get error messages. It fixes instances in
which an extra character is put into the URL, characters are
transposed, a character is missing, or the wrong character is typed.
It will also fix instances when the incorrect extension is typed.

URLSpellCheck can't fix problems when someone types in the wrong domainfor example, http://www.grala.com rather than http://www.gralla.com. Domains are handled by the Domain Name System (DNS), so add-in software can't solve the problem. To solve it, you'd have to own the various misspellings of your domain and then have DNS redirect them to the proper domain.

The program runs as a snap-in to the MMC. Highlight your web site in
the MMC, right-click on the Properties button, and click on the
URLSpellCheck tab. From there, you'll be able to
enable or disable the program.

URLSpellCheck is shareware and free to try, but if you use it for
more than 30 days you're expected to pay $49.95.

4.9.3 Use Caching for Better Performance

When you run a web site,

three issues top your
list of concerns: how to preserve bandwidth, how to reduce the
performance load on your PC, and how to make the site load faster for
visitors.

Here's a three-for-one solution: use caching
properly. When visitors come to your site, have them use cached
images such as logos, navigation bars, and similar content from their
own PC, rather than hitting your server every time. When you do this,
after they retrieve the image for the first time, each subsequent
time they need to get the image, it's retrieved from
their own PC, rather than your server. Their pages load faster, your
PC doesn't have to serve up as much content, and you
don't use as much bandwidth.

To make sure your site uses caching, try

CacheRight (http://www.port80software.com/products/cacheright/).
Like URLSpellCheck, it runs as a snap-in to MMC. To use it, highlight
your web site in MMC, right-click on the Properties button, and click
on the CachRight tab. From there, you'll be able to
enable or disable the program, as well as set options for how the
cache should be used. The main option you'll set is
expiration policies for the cachein other words, at what point
the visiting browser should check your web site to see whether the
content the browser has cached is old and needs to be updated. You
set the amount of time, such as a week, and set when that time should
start, either the last time the browser visited your site or the last
time you modified the cached content. I prefer to use the start time
as the last time I modified the cached content; that way, browsers
won't unnecessarily try to get content from my site.

CacheRight is shareware and free to try, but if you use it for more
than 30 days you're expected to pay $149.95.

4.9.4 See Also

The IISFAQ site (http://www.iisfaq.com) is a great source for
tips, advice, and downloads related to IIS.