Internet Information Services (IIS) – Quick Start

Introduction

IIS is a well known software to deliver websites on Microsoft windows platform. You can use it to delivery static contents, ASP .NET Web applications or ASP .NET Core web applications. It have many other features e.g. it can limit the exposed public surface area of the apps that it hosts. Also, it can provide an additional layer of configuration and defense and might integrate better with existing infrastructure.

Based on your OS, you might need to enable IIS feature and in this post, I will show you how to quickly setup IIS on your windows machine.

Turn Windows Feature on or off

If IIS is not enabled/installed on your machine, you need to turn this feature on. Click the shown item and it will open up a dialog as shown below, enable the following:

• IIS Management Console
• IIS Management Service

Enable Application Development Features

Next, we will expand the World Wide Web Service Node and enable the features as shown below:

Enable Common HTTP Features

Enable following Common HTTP Features:

Windows Process Activation Service

Next, enable WPA as shown below:

Save and Apply Changes

Click OK button it will show a windows dialog as shown below and your changes will be applied:

Windows Process Activation Service

Open up the service tabs on your machine and check that Windows Process Activation Service (WPA) is running as shown below:

Start IIS Web Server

Now, start IIS from the start menu as shown below:

and you will see IIS window similar to the following:

There is already a Default Web Site and try to access it from your browser:

and we can see that the default web site is served to the browser. IIS is up and running.

Summary

IIS is the recommended way to serve web contents on windows. Setting this up on windows is not difficult either. For more information you can check my other article to see how to server ASP .NET Core and Angular application using IIS. Till Next time, happy coding.

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