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This article will provide you a step by step user guide to provide answers to following question.

• How to configure IIS7?
• How to create virtual directory on IIS7?
• How to do ASP.Net development on IIS7?

First lets start with very basic information about IIS and Web application development on Windows Vista and Longhorn.

• Version of Internet Information Services (IIS) on the new platform is IIS7
• Version of ASP.Net/.Net framework installed on Windows Vista is .Net2.0. The OS does not support instalaltion of .Net 1.1 without SP1. So if you want to install .Net 1.1 on the machine, download it from MSDN. The installation will warn you about incompatibility issues with the version of .Net framework. What that is telling you is that you need to install SP1 for .Net framework after installing the framrwork. Otherwise it is not going to work.
• Installation of Visual Studio 2005 is supported on Windows Vista.
• Installation of SQL Server 2005 is not supported with out SP1. So if you plan to use SQL Server 2005, then you will have to SP1 after that installation.

1. Installation Of IIS

In my previous article Windows Vista - Add Remove Program I explained how you can enable IIS on your machine. And in another article Server Error HTTP Error 404.3 - Not Found gave some more information about IIS7 configuration issues.

2. Create Virtual Directory

Start IIS Manager console. The user interface will look something like the following image. Right click on Default Web Site node and click on Create Virtual Directory menu item.

3. Specify Name And Path

After you select Create Virtual Directory menu option, you will be presented with a dialog box as shown in the following images. You can specify the Alias and physical path to the directory where virtual directory should be created. Once you have specified these values, you have created your web application virtual directory on IIS7.

You will see the VD node in left view of IIS Manager. Click on it and your center view will look something like the following image.