October 12th, 2008 by Gabriel

IIS allows you to display your own custom error pages instead of ugly default error pages. You will have to create an HTML or ASP page with the desired information you want to display.

Following are the steps -

1. Open Internet Information Server
2. Select your Web site in the tree view at left pane, right-click and choose Properties
3. Click on the Custom Errors tab.
4. Scroll down to the error you wish to change
5. select it, and click the Edit Properties button.
6. Enter the URL to your page that you have created
7. Click Ok at the bottom.

your customized error page will be displayed next time instead of old ugly and unfriendly default error page 

October 10th, 2008 by Gabriel

Here are some useful tools that help us in configuring IIS server and track the problematic web sites easily :

1. IIS Passwords Sync:

IIS 6.0 web sites run under anonymous user accounts. It is IUSR_<machine name> (by default) or other user accounts created by your web hosting control panel. The users’ passwords are set automatically set and are never known. However, sometimes for some reason the passwords get out of sync or corrupted and need to be reset. The easiest way to reset these passwords is to use IIS Passwords Sync program. It extracts the passwords that Microsoft IIS 6.0 has in its metabase and updates the accounts in “Local Users and Groups” to use that passwords.

Download link - http://www.iis.net/downloads/default.aspx?tabid=34&g=6&i=1742

2. IIS Pool:

With IIS Pool tool we can easily search the problematic sites which have default application pool.

IIS Application Pools Monitoring and Analysis:

This program allows monitoring of IIS 6 application pools. All the monitoring data is stored in log files. It is possible to analyze a pool to find a website (or a virtual application) using too much resources. …

Overview -

IIS Application Pools Monitoring and Analysis:

* This program allows monitoring of IIS 6 application pools.

* All the monitoring data is stored in log files.

* It is possible to analyze a pool to find a website (or a virtual application) using too much resources.

Features -

* IIS application pools monitoring

* IIS application pools analysis

* Find websites using too much resources

Download link - http://www.iis.net/downloads/default.aspx?tabid=34&g=6&i=1728

3. IIS Report:

Overview -

IIS Report is a command line tool. It allows us to create different IIS related reports. For example it can get the list of all SSL websites and sort it by IP address, or get the list of all websites and sort it by application pool name and then by website name, …

There is no installation required. Just download and unrar the archive file. Then start the program with:

C:\>iisreport.exe /?

to get more information and see all the parameters available.

Benefits -

* Easy-to-use

* Fast

* It is possible to import the reports with Excel

* It is possible to parse the reports with VBS or BAT programs and other administration applications.

Download link - http://www.iis.net/downloads/default.aspx?tabid=34&g=6&i=1730

September 28th, 2008 by Gabriel

What is ASP.NET?

ASP.NET is a server side scripting that enables scripts to be executed by an Internet server.

1. ASP.NET is a Microsoft Technology
2. ASP stands for Active Server Pages
3. ASP.NET is a program that runs inside IIS
4. IIS (Internet Information Services) is Microsoft’s Internet server
5. IIS comes as a free component with Windows Servers
6. IIS is also a part of Windows 2000 and XP Professional

What is an ASP.NET File?

1. An ASP.NET file is just the same as an HTML file
2. An ASP.NET file can contain HTML, XML, and scripts
3. Scripts in an ASP.NET file are executed on the server
4. An ASP.NET file has the file extension “.aspx”

How Does ASP.NET Work?

1. When a browser requests an HTML file, the server returns the file
2. When a browser requests an ASP.NET file, IIS passes the request to the ASP.NET engine on the server
3. The ASP.NET engine reads the file, line by line, and executes the scripts in the file
4. Finally, the ASP.NET file is returned to the browser as plain HTML