<< Page 2

So far we have accomplished the following tasks with IIS7.

• Created a new virtual directory
• Configure its physical path
• Specify authentication scheme to use

If you are not looking into doing any more configuration changes, then you are see set to host the application in this virtual directory as well as do some ASP.Net development for this web application. Next I will show you how to do some more configuration changes.

6. Configure Default Page For Site

Most of web sites have their home page set to one of the following pages.

• Default.htm
• Default.asp
• index.htm
• index.html
• default.aspx

This may not be the case all the time. Sometimes you need to set the default page for your home page or folder in your application to something different. In that case you need to set the default document for the web application differently. Click on your virtual directly in IIS Manager and then you will see Default Document feature in center view. Double click on that and you will be presented with the following dialog box where you can specify the default page for your application.

7. Custom Error Pages

Next important task in hand for your web application configuration is setting the custom error pages. These are the pages that you want your users to see when some error occurs. It is always a good practice to redirect the users to some predetermined error page when something goes wrong on the site. It serves multiple purposes.

• You can keep track of errors and the cause which will help you diagose problems in your application
• Give user friendly message to the user and redirect them to some other part of the application or site so that they can continue with their visit to your site.

To configure custom error pages, double click on Custom Error Pages feature in center view and it will bring up the following detailed view where you can configure the pages for HTTP errors.

8. Session State Configuration

Session state configuration is one of the most important tasks in web applicaiton development. You will see Session State feature in center view. Double click on it and it will bring up the following detailed view where you can configure the session state for your application.

9. More Settings

There are plenty of more settings in IIS7 that you can set to fine tune your web application. In this article series I have covered some basics ones that you need to get started. In the next articles I will discussing more advanced and detailed configuration settings for ASP.Net development as wll as hosting.