Setting up Internet Information Services on Windows XP

IIS 5.1 is available in Microsoft Windows XP Professional edition, however it has a few limitations:

1. Only can host ONE Website, and ONE FTP site
2. A lot of security issues are known, please make sure you run Windows Update afterwards to apply all the IIS Security Patches if the webserver will be accessible from the Internet.
3. 

But it is an excellent choice for home users who only need a webserver for testing and developing their own site which they are going to upload to a dedicated hosting company's webservice.

NOTE: Microsoft Windows 98 came with 'Personal Web Server'. This is highly outdated and the steps to install that are not the same as outlined in this tutorial.

NOTE: Microsoft Windows 2000 also comes with a version of IIS (most likely 5.0). This tutorial MAY be the same for Windows 2000.

NOTE: Microsoft Windows 2003 also comes with a version of IIS (version 6.0). This tutorial MAY be the same for Windows 2003.

1. Open Add/Remove Windows components.
   1. Open the control panel, and select Add/Remove Applications (1)
   2. On the side menu select Add/Remove Windows Components (2)
2. Tick the box beside 'Internet Information Services(IIS)' (3)
3. Highlight the 'Internet Information Services (IIS)' (3) item and click 'Details' (4)
   
4. Tick the box beside 'World Wide Web Service' (1)
   If you want to use Frontpage Extensions tick the box beside it (2). Please note that if you just want to use Frontpage to CREATE the site and are NOT using any of Frontpage's advanced features (eg. dynamic content and database results) then this is not needed.
   Finally Click OK (3)
   
5. During install you may get a dialogue like the one shown below. If you do, insert your windows XP Professional CD and direct it to the folder 'i386' on the CD.
   
6. This image speaks for itself doesn't it?
   
   IIS is installed and should be working.
7. Now to see if it's working. Open up an Internet browser and direct it to http://localhost/. If IIS is working correctly you should now see a webpage like this:
   
   WARNING: At this point nobody can access any documents via your newly installed webserver, HOWEVER if the machine is connected directly to the Internet, or port 80 is forwarded to the computer and there's no firewall blocking port 80, then your computer is open to Virus and Trojan attacks which target newly installed (and non-updated) IIS servers. It is suggested at this point that you connect to Windows Update and install security updates, OR (and you may like to do this anyway if no one on the Internet needs access) to block port 80 on your firewall.
   The above page that is shown to you is ONLY accessible by somebody sitting at your computer and keyboard, someone on a computer connected via a network (ie. LAN or Internet) will receive a 'Page Under Construction' page like the one below:
   
8. Now for the fun stuff?
   1. Open up My Computer and browse to c:\inetpub\wwwroot\, you can safely delete all the files in here.
      Frontpage Extensions: If you installed Frontpage extensions in step 4, do NOT delete any folder starting with an Underscore(_)
   2. In c:\inetpub\wwwroot\ you can create a page called 'index.html' this will become the default start page which any browser will see.
   3. Install any extras you want, eg. PHP or Helicon's ISAPI_Rewrite
      HINT: While developing websites only use lower-case filenames. Why? Because the Linux file system is case sensitive (most web hosting companies run Linux/Unix variants for their hosting) and it's not that easy to have to change the name of every page when something goes wrong.

IIS can be configured through 'Computer Management'. Various things can be set here, including the directory of the webroot, the default page names, and addition of Virtual Directories.

1. Right click My Computer and select Manage (1)
2. Select Web Sites (4) under 'Services and Applications' (2) » 'Internet Information Services' (3)
   
3. Right click on 'Default Web Site' (5) and select Properties
4. Select the 'Home Directory'(1) Tab
5. Then in the 'Local Path' (2) field select/direct it to the new directory.
6. Hit OK (3) and IIS should now be serving files from the selected directory.

1. Right click My Computer and select Manage (1)
2. Select Web Sites (4) under 'Services and Applications' (2) » 'Internet Information Services' (3)
3. Right click on 'Default Web Site' (5) and select Properties
   
4. Select the 'Documents' (1) Tab
   
   Change the order of the documents, add new document names, or remove them as you see fit from the list (2)

1. Right click My Computer and select Manage (1)
2. Select Web Sites (4) under 'Services and Applications' (2) » 'Internet Information Services' (3)
   
3. Right click on 'Default Web Site' (1 or 5 (above)) and select 'NEW (2) » Virtual Directory (3)'
   
4. Follow the wizard, entering the Alias (this is the name as it appears on the webserver, eg. http://localhost/VIRTUAL_DIRECTORY/) and the local path to be served (eg. D:\Websites\Test1_Virtual_Directory\).

That's this tutorial/howto on installing IIS finished; enjoy your new web server :)

If anything has been left out, explained incorrectly, spelt wrongly etc. or you feel there needs to be a tutorial/howto on a specific issue with IIS, write one up :)

-DD32

Coming Soon: How to install PHP on IIS, how to install mySQL