Configuring and Testing WWW

In this exercise, we configure and test the World-Wide-Web portion of IIS 4.0. We look at the properties of the web server, make a few simple changes, and then explore the directory structure of the web space.

Click Here for a large version of the image To configure the Web server, in the Microsoft Management Console, we select the server and right-click and select properties.


Click Here for a large version of the image The Web Site tab, the only thing that you might want to change is the log file directory. To access this press Properties in the logging area.


Click Here for a large version of the image We switch the logging to the D: drive in the Logfiles subdirectory.


Click Here for a large version of the image This is the material under the Home Directory tab.


Click Here for a large version of the image Under HTTP Headers you may need to configure the MIME types from time to time. Typically you will need to do this for certain types of multimedia content.


Click Here for a large version of the image Like FTP, we must determine what type of authentication we will accept for password-protected web pages. We will have to enable "Basic Authentication" to maintain backwards compatibility with a wide variety of browsers.

Like FTP, we will receive a dialog from the system concerned with plain text passwords being transmitted across the net. Again, the security is no different than any other Web server using basic authentication.

If you are not doing any password protected material used by the general public and guarantee that all users needing password access have the latest copies of Internet Explorer, FrontPage, and Visual Interdev, you may be able to leave "Basic Authentication" turned off, which will be a better security arrangement.


Click Here for a large version of the image Under the Documents tab, you can specify the default document(s) to be retrieved when a URL points to a directory. You should probably add index.htm, index.html and index.asp to the existing default files.

It is OK to have more than one default file. They are checked in order.


Click Here for a large version of the image Much like in FTP we will do a little test to make sure we understand how IIS is configured. Open a web browser and point to our new web server. Locally, you can use the URL http://www/.

If you do not yet have DNS set up, you may need to use an IP address in the URL such as http://192.168.1.10/.


Click Here for a large version of the image On the server, run Notepad, select File | Open and navigate to the D:\InetPub\wwwroot directory. Open the default file.


Click Here for a large version of the image Scroll down and find "Welcome to Microsoft".


Click Here for a large version of the image Add a new line containing something like, "Testing 1 2 3 ..." and save the file.

Don't exit notepad - yet.


Click Here for a large version of the image Reload the browser and viola' you have modified the contents of the web server.

Now go back into notepad and restore and save the original contents of the default file.

This gives a basic overview of how the web server operates.