Mike Volodarsky's Blog

I've haven't had a chance to post much over the past few weeks - its pretty frustrating at times to look at the ever-increasing backlog of juicy IIS7 topics that I want to cover and no time to actually do them justice.

I've been working on a few interesting things lately, that have been taking my extra time.

Read more at http://mvolo.com/blogs/serverside/archive/2007/09/09/End-of-summer-update_3A00_-New-IIS7-modules_2C00_-Hosting-roadshow_2C00_-MSDN-magazine_2C00_-IIS7-Resource-Kit_2C00_-and-more.aspx.

This weekend, I was working on an MSDN magazine article and happened to install the Wordpress PHP blog app on IIS7.  Of course, I used the latest FastCGI bits available in the box in in Windows Server 2008 Beta 3, and the latest Windows-optimized PHP 5.2.3 build from www.php.net.  Long story short, I ended up writing a Wordpress plugin that allows Wordpress to use IIS authentication methods, including forms authentication.

Read about installing Wordpress on IIS7, the Wordpress extensibility model, and get the IIS Authentication plugin here: http://mvolo.com/blogs/serverside/archive/2007/08/12/IIS-Authentication-plugin-for-the-Wordpress-PHP-blogging-engine.aspx.

IIS7 configuration extensibility allows you to create custom configuration sections that can be used side by side the IIS configuration sections.  However, setting this up requires a few steps that may be difficult to accomplish, especially in a automated way from a script or an installer.

This post describes the IIS7 configuration extensibility, the steps to create and register your custom configuration sections, and provides a downloadable tool you can use to simplify and automate this process.

Read all about it and download IISSCHEMA.EXE here: http://mvolo.com/blogs/serverside/archive/2007/08/04/IISSCHEMA.EXE-_2D00_-A-tool-to-register-IIS7-configuration-sections.aspx.

Dealing with server errors can be frustrating.  Thankfully, IIS7 comes with many improvements to help diagnose errors when they occur, and help resolve them - however, its important that you know how to property use these capabilities. 

This post gives you what you need to know to troubleshoot IIS7 errors like a pro.

Read all about it at http://mvolo.com/blogs/serverside/archive/2007/07/26/Troubleshoot-IIS7-errors-like-a-pro.aspx.

As you know, IIS7 repaces the metabase with a whole new configuration system, based on a distributed hierarchy of XML configuration files also used by the .NET Framework/ASP.NET.  This confguration system is fundamentally different from the metabase, and so it should come as no suprise that the way configuration paths work is also different. 

The concept of configuration paths is fundamental to managing and operating an IIS server, so I wanted to spend some time explaining it in hope that this can help everyone enjoy their IIS7 server just a little bit more :)  If you have come here wondering exactly what the hell is MACHINE/WEBROOT/APPHOST, you have come to the right place.

Read all about IIS7 configuration paths at http://mvolo.com/blogs/serverside/archive/2007/07/21/Anatomy-of-an-IIS7-configuration-path.aspx.

In the course of IIS7 development, the team and I have answered an infinity of questions about IIS7 on any possible topic imaginable.  Ironically, neither I nor anyone else I know on the team has ever answered the most basic question - what is the minimum set of steps necessary to get a website running with IIS7? 

This post answers this exact question, and explains the key IIS7 concepts of sites, applications, and virtual directories (vdirs), which must be created before your IIS7 server can serve a single request.  It also provides the steps necessary to create IIS7 sites, applications, and virtual directories, and options for configuring them.

Read more at http://mvolo.com/blogs/serverside/archive/2007/07/12/Creating-IIS7-sites_2C00_-applications_2C00_-and-virtual-directories.aspx.

A Visual Studio patch that fixes the Visual Studio F5 debugging of IIS7 applications on Windows Vista Home Premium and above has been released! 

This patch solves the "An authentication error occurred while communicating with the web server.  Please see Help for assistance.", and "Debugging failed because integrated Windows authentication is not enabled.  Please see Help for assistance" errors, that until now had to be worked around using the instructions in my previous post on this matter.

Read more and get the patch information from my older post on this subject, Fix problems with Visual Studio F5 debugging of ASP.NET applications on IIS7 Vista.