Home / server / Questions / 412306
Accepted
JMK
Asked: 2012-07-30 08:39:27 +0800 CST

How do I host an ASP.Net 4 website on Windows Server 2003?

  • 772

Not sure if this is a question for Stackoverflow or here, but I'm guessing here is more appropriate.

First of all, we have to use Windows Server 2003 32 bit R2 Standard (even though our server has a decent quad core processor and 8GB's of RAM (D'oh!)). Upgrading to Server 2008 R2 is sadly not an option.

I want to host a .Net 4 ASP.Net 4 website on this server. Here is what I have done so far:

  1. Installed the Web Platform Installer
  2. Used the Web Platform installer to install IIS 7.5 express and IIS Recommended Configuration

I have already hit a bit of a wall here. Even though the Web Platform Installer says that IIS 7.5 express is installed:

IIS 7.5

When I go to Control Panel => Administrative Tools => Internet Information Services (IIS) Manager (this is the only IIS related object under Administrative Tools) it says that I am running IIS V6.0. I can't see IIS7.5 mentioned anywhere, nor can I find anything related to IIS7.5 in the start menu:

IIS 6

I'm not sure if this is relevant but IIS 7 recommended configuration always presents me with the option to Add, even though I have previously gone through the installation process and received the Install Successful message.

If I attempt to use Visual Studio to add a website on my server, I get the below error telling me to install Frontpage extensions (which seems odd as Frontpage was discontinued in 2006, why do I need Frontpage extensions to host a .Net 4 ASP.Net 4 webpage?):

Frontpage Extensions?

As you can see I am a bit stumped here and some help would be much appreciated.

Thanks

iis

2 Answers

  1. Have you looked at the resources on the IIS page?

    http://learn.iis.net/page.aspx/870/running-iis-express-from-the-command-line/

    It seems as though you can also install WebMatrix to configure some of the IIS Express settings.

    • 2
  2. Best Answer

    I started reading Pro ASP.Net MVC 3 Framework and pretty early in the text was pointed towards to the solution, which is here. This is a detailed walkthrough on how to run .Net 4 ASP code on Server 2003.

    • 0