To configure the Web server, in the Microsoft Management Console, we select the server and right-click and select properties.
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.
We switch the logging to the D: drive in the Logfiles subdirectory.
This is the material under the Home Directory tab.
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.
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.
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.
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/.
On the server, run Notepad, select File | Open and navigate to the D:\InetPub\wwwroot directory. Open the default file.
Scroll down and find "Welcome to Microsoft".
Add a new line containing something like, "Testing 1 2 3 ..." and
save the file.
Don't exit notepad - yet.
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.