Taking a look at IIS
In case you didn’t know, IIS stands for Internet Information Services; basically, IIS is the web server offering from Microsoft. IIS is included in most distributions of Windows, including some non-server distributions (such as Windows 2000). IIS is a relatively simple tool to use and configure when compared to comparable offerings such as Apache Web Server.
If you opt to install IIS and maintain a web server, you will need to (I cannot stress this enough) stay current with all Microsoft updates concerning IIS, because IIS holds a particularly dear place in many hackers’ hearts.
Installing IIS
We will install IIS as we did Active Directory/DNS. Go to Start -> Administrative Tools -> Configure Your Server, click Next -> Next, choose Application Server, click Next, and choose to “Enable ASP.NET.” I would not recommend choosing to enable FrontPage Server Extensions unless you feel some burning desire to (i.e. if you plan on using the extensions), so click Next. Finally, click Next once again. IIS will install, and then you will be prompted that “This Server is Now an Application Server.” Choose “Finish” and be done. Installation is now complete.
The Basics of Configuring Web Sites
IIS is managed through MMC, so go to Start -> Administrative Tools -> Internet Information Services (IIS) Manager. In IIS you can create, edit, and delete “Web Sites” that can be either Intranet or Internet sites. Windows is kind enough to give you a “Default Web Site,” which I usually rename to something more personal, in this case, “localnet.” On the right-hand side, you can see all of the files in the web site that you are configuring. Because we have started by editing the default web site, you will see the default files. Before you begin to put files in the site, however, you will want to configure your web site. Click on the name of the web site in the left-hand side of the screen and press Action -> Properties. A multi-tabbed window will appear. In all likelihood, you will not use most of these tabs, but I will review some key ones.
The Web Site tab covers some important information, such as Connection timeout and TCP port number, but by far the most important component of this tab is the “Advanced” button next to IP Address that happens to define just what type of header values the web server will accept. Go to “Advanced,” select the record (All Unassigned), and press Remove. Then, press Add, select your IP address, choose the TCP port that you wish for your site to be accessible at, and finally choose the Host Header value for your site. The Host Header value can be confusing to configure, so here it goes. If you type in a certain host header value, such as “localhost,” the site becomes only accessible when “localhost” is requested (rather than some alternate name, like “foxsox” or “www.microsoft.com“). Likewise, if I type in “foxsox” as the host header value, the web site is only accessible when “foxsox” is requested. So, if you had some domain, like “www.foxsoxinternational.com” and it points to the foxsox IP address (say, 63.21.65.55), you would still need to configure the web site to accept queries either from “www.foxsoxinterational.com” or from any other set that include “www.foxsoxinternational.com,” such as “*.foxsoxinternational.com.”
Equally crucial is the “Home Directory” tab. Here, you specify where the web site actually is. For example, the Default Web Site is located at c:inetpubwwwroot, but you can specify it to be anywhere that you want. In our case, I will specify it to be located at “C:/Weblocalnet.” In addition, you can have it point to a shared folder on another computer or even simply another URL. Once you have specified the location (path) to the folder, you will need to configure the access control options, found directly under the path (except in the case of the URL redirection option, because the URL that you are forwarding the site to obviously handles its own configuration). Generally, the default settings are sufficient. There are other options below concerning Applications and Application Pools but that is another topic for another tutorial.
The “Documents” tab allows you to specify the “default” pages list as well as the footer for the web site. The “default” content page is the page that will be loaded if no page is specified in the URL; for example, if you type in http://www.google.com, Google’s web server automatically loads http://www.google.com/index.html. You can likewise set your web site to behave the same. Note that the default content page list acts in order of priority from top to bottom, so the server will first “look” for the top entry, then the second, then the third, and so forth. The document footer option simply allows you to specify an HTML page that will appended to the bottom of every document that the server returns.
Creating a New Web Site
Finally, let’s talk about creating a new web site. On the left-hand side of the screen, click on “Web Sites.” Then, on the top bar, click on Action -> New -> Web Site. Click Next, type in a name for your site, then click Next again. You will be prompted for IP information, so enter it correspondingly and click next. Type in the path to your site and then click next again. Finally, set the permissions to the site, press Next, and then Finish. It doesn’t get any easier than that, folks!
More information about IIS can be found at http://www.iisanswers.com.
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i really want to know more about windows server 2003.
After I setup my Windows Server 2003, I am failig to log on with the domain server that I have just created. Can somebody tell me how to link other computers (with Win XP and Vista) to my server
Hi folks,
I appreciate the effort, but the title is “Windows Server 2003 Setup Guide” and I was hoping for some setup information – not a buyers guide.
Thanks ,
— Deck
This was not a bad beginner’s article. In fact, it is the first one that explained the domain name in AD setup. I was really confused by this initially. There was nothing saying you could have yourcompanydomain.com or yourcompany.local and what the differences were. It REALLY pissed me off when the books would all say (Use Appropriate Server Info) for that section. How was I supposed to know what was appropriate on my first install. You might want to even expand that a little. You should do a follow on or expansion for the DHCP, DNS, and WINS as well. This can be confusing as well, and in an XP or Vista environment, you would be using them.
To John’s comment – You need to add the workstation to the Domain. I am assuming you got into the server just fine. On one of the workstations, go to My Computer and right click, and then select Properties. Now click on the Computer Name tab. Near the bottom right of the window select change. At the top will be the comnputer name, and at the bottom will be Workgroup and Domain. Change the radio button to Domain, and then enter the name of the domain you created. If you picked YourCompany.local in the setup, enter YourCompany, and select OK. You will be prompted for the domain administrator credentials. Administrator and what ever you set the server administrator password to. You will get a series of dialogue boxes you hiy ok to. After the last one, you will need to restart the workstation. When it restartes, you can use Administrator, the domain administrator password, and there will be a new drop down box. It will probably says “This Computer”. Change it to the domain you picked, and then login. You are now on the domain. If you followed the tutorial and setup user accounts, you need to add those domain users to the workstation to login as the user. The user effectively has no right at the moment to the workstation. If you setup a user named “userone”, we add them to the workstation as follows. Right click My Computer and select Manage. Select Local User and Groups. The Users folder is “LOCAL” user accounts – meaning only on that workstation. So you want to select GROUPS. You can select the level of user rights and add them to that group. generally you do not want your users above Power User, but this is dictated by the software you use, and the level of control you want the user to have. There are tons of articles on this stuff. So let’s click Power Users. In the new window, select Add, and in the white open space, start typing “userone” (this is just an example name – you might use first initial and last name such as jsmith – or – john.smith – etc — again – there are tons of articles on naming schemes for users and workstations). So in our example, we start typing “userone” – we can actually type “user” and then use the check name button to the right, and it should either find the user or give you a list. For example if we had userone, usertwo, userthree – it would find all three in the list because they all start with user. It would be waiting for you to pick which one. So pick the user, and it should appear in the white window where you were typing. Be careful if you have a local user account with the same name, it can get confused. You see people using things like John for user names. They have no place on a domain – so don’t do it. It also gives you the chance to migrate the user’s profile to their new domain account profile you are going to create the first time you login as the user. So once you have the use in, hit ok until your boxes are gone, and then logoff as the Domain Administrator. Now change the user name to the user you picked. In our example it was userone. Login with the password. The first login will take a while as it sets up the profile. You are now on the domain as a user you setup.
Deck hanzen – dude – you have to clieck the next button at the bottom of the article. In his defense – i did not see it at first either. You guys need to put space between the buttons. Keep up the good work though.
Oops – made a typo in there when I was changing a few things around. WINS for a mixed NT, 98 with XP and Vista.
beginner question.. what is the difference between windows server 2003 and r2?
after i installed windows server 2003, what should i do next?
tnx
Google it =:) as there is way to much to list on that one, but in general 03 is much the same as r2 !
I thought this tutorial for an entry level tutorial was laid out quite well. I pass this tutorial to others who are curious or have questions on a base level how a domain is set up. In my opinion this tutorial is 5\5 stars. For those who commented about the websites format and lay out; I agree about the previous-Next Page link. Whoever href’d that was in a hurry and it probably was not at focus, but it makes up for such a nit picky code eye pain by the one of a kind windows server 2003 tutorial. This gentlemen really took his time of the day to paint the bigger picture in a “for Dummies” level tutorial. If you have been working as a desktop technician pushing images to workstations, building batch scripts and been using AD users and Computers snap in with limited rights to AD and always wanted to grasp the true understanding of how your jobs network operates this tutorial teaches you how you would set it up. The rest of the gaps were clearly stated “Out Of Scope”, thus issues that go to mind such as security policy settings, and all the in’s and out’s of security options one could do would have taken way to long. A great job here was done, and if anyone has written a tutorial you know the temptation to want to deviate and go on tangents explaining things more in depth while at the same time getting further off track of the focus of the tutorials direction. He kept great control here with that, and this tutorial litterally brought it together for me. My mind goes crazy on what I want to do at work with this information in mind. Most of us who work desktop support jobs have what it takes to engineer a domain, and could code in share point scripts to write credentials to apps, and so forth, but because were not MCSE certified we dont get to touch the DC’s. “In my case that is” . I recently took a job where “I” am the “ADMIN” over the domain for a very small business, and with freedom to do as I wish on the domain I created with only but 60 machines and users I am advancing allot. We use a cisco router here and a business line broadband modem since I am the sould systems engineer per say I am also responsible for it. So I play with subnetting and so forth in my free time, and every day is not a boring day all because of this tutorial which helped me get the job! Every day I am setting policies, locking down users machines. The boss\Owner who didnt have a domain setup and each phone agent was just taking calls, and had an independent machine with full admin rights didnt know any better. I made suggestions and told him we were going to need to domain this work environment and sold him on letting me go to Dell’s website, bought a server with a packaged lisence deal. Then I setup 3 other child servers, one as a file server, printer server, and using newer workstations with the w2k3 OS for the roles. I build scripts in c++ to do profile backups etc… my days flyyyyyyy it’s almost not even a job to me, but a do something I love and get paid type of work. This tutorial being primarily text based versus youtube video’s really put the confidence in me enough to present the benefits to the owner to make him buy a $3k server package. It was all worth it to him once I setup policies that allowed him to stealthly RDC into his employee’s workstations and see what they are doing when he wanted. I am doing research on Magic Jack type phone setups to save the token phone setup he is paying out the nose for on a monthly basis. My ideal is to have a very cost efficient call system in which phone calls can be recorded and monitored and even be remotely monitored real time to kind of do some call quality. All of these measures are being coerced by the knowledge I have and how it can save money and make business operations more efficient ALL THANKS TO GOOD LAID OUT TUTORIALS LIKE THIS ONE!!! It’s only until now that I wrote a comment on this tutorial I should have done so when I first read it.
I can’t see the link for the next page of the tutorial. Where is it?
Guide is excellent however please correct the images. They are currently broken due to a script error.
Any chance you could fix the images and also expand on roaming profiles?
Thanks
Cant say much for this posting its of little or no use to anyone setting up sever 2003 like my dad used to tell me if you dount know what ur talking about just shut up and listen to some one thats done it instead of waisting every ones time good intensions are like ass holes everyones got one
Bla Bla Bla why don’t you suck my dick???