Multiple IIS on XP Pro SP2 - for SEO Testing - Smart - Search

Thursday, December 7, 2006

Multiple IIS on XP Pro SP2 - for SEO Testing

While this may seem like 'techy' stuff, for a Search engineer, successful search conversion in marketing requires some web page technical skills combined with web copy writing ... validated to run in server environments. For example, page headers and footers are often assembled server -side so what the search engine and humans 'see' is not how the pieces exist physically on the server...

Another way of putting this is that you cannot often 'view' SEO code changes on your local machine unless you have a copy of IIS server (for ASP code) running on your machine. And if you have Windows XP Pro (very popular)... this isn't a standard load or pre-load option... for a number of reasons.

I've provided the full details of how to get multiple copies of IIS server (only limited to 10 concurrent users for testing), running properly on a Windows XP Pro client machines for remote testing.... on my web site.

Multiple IIS 5.1-XP Pro-SP2-.NET2.0.50727

Sometimes by just seeing the title, you get a good idea
of what this is really all about:

Chances are most likely that when you first got XP Pro installed (perhaps as an upgrade from a pre-installed XP Home) you didn't install the included copy of IIS (version 5.1, a 'slightly' crippled copy of IIS limited to 10 concurrent users and 1 web server definition). Nevertheless, if you were able to remove the 1 web server definition, for the purposes of a test site and especially for remote development (and co-development), a working copy would be nice to test .NET applications as in many ASP pages.

Also, when testing and removing applications you may have un-synchronized (or de-registered) certain dlls' that you didn't realize might be needed to support these services (remember the warning that certain files may still be shared by other programs?... so you said no, but that doesn't mean that they might have been un-registered ? ..... in any case, most likely the files have just been un-registered to Windows.

In any case, here are the short notes to the fast and dirty, set it up for multiple server support, with 2nd work-arounds to many other issues. There are literally hundreds of notices with partial applications of these notes ... and except for the initial security db setup reinitialization, the rest of the steps just insure everything is working together correctly.

So here goes:

IIS (5.1) on XP Pro SP2 w/.NET 2.0

Windows XP Pro, similar to Windows 2000 Pro, provides a copy of IIS (Internet Information Server) version 5.1, that can be very useful in localized testing. It only differs from the IIS versions on server editions of 2000 and 2003, in that (1) It is limited to 10 users, (2) by default it only manages one server, and (3) there are minor limitations in server maintenance like the ability to create new application configurations (to new extensions).

The difficulty in the installation and setup of IIS version 5.1 on XP Pro with SP2, running under .NET 2.0 regards the following issues:

Key database security files are often not created or corrupted, creating symtoms of install disk failure initially
Other programs such as Anti-Virus, Firewalls and Spam control cause conflicts with the IIS install, often related to forms of ‘script blocking’
Often times critical windows dynamic link libraries get messed up (for example when working with sql server) and need to be re-registered (system32, system32/inetsrv)
.Net (either 1.1.4322 or 2.0.50727 versions) need to be re-installed and sync’ed with IIS
IIS Users (anonymous-IUSR and internal processes-IWAM) and ASPNET ‘permissions’ need to be applied to both code as well as to physical folder and files (ACLs, IIS User/Groups, NTFS)
IIS 6 Resource Kit extends diagnostics
XP Pro IIS Admin provides for support for multiple web server instance (although only one can be active)

Details:

Fix: Only apply these if the CD fails to fully install: (two calls to 'esentutl' a windows programs for managing windows security database)
Fully uninstall Norton (anti-virus), Zone Alarm (firewalls) and Spy Sweeper (anti-spyware) , then reinstall IIS Server from CD
Re-register DLLs - nothing gets hurt: (7 dlls total from windows\system32 and windows\system32\inetsvr)
.NET version 2.0.50727 Reinstall and Sync (.Net often unsync'ed) :Respective aspnet_regiis from proper version of .NET framework, changes to .NET machine.config, security access to iis server from ASPNET
Computer Management – Users, Groups, Components: Coordination of both IIS Security from within Computer admin's User-Groups definitions and selective share-ipaddr/folder/file level NTFS security
Fix Sample IIS files to match:
Reinstall anti-virus, firewalls, and spyware controls... then Diagnostics and Enhancements (multi-servers)