Getting started with IIS7 in Windows vista

Making the step from Windows XP Professional to Vista Ultimate may take some adjustment time, but, while for most people and most scenarios it won’t be much of a deal, web developers trying to do their usual thing (build websites ;) ) may find themselves stuck at one point: the very beginning.

In Windows XP Professional and IIS6, you’d start setting up your computer by enabling Internet Information Services in Control Panel/Add/Remove Programs/Windows Components. Installing Internet Information Services would also install the management console that allowed you to setup local websites. Alternatively, in XP Pro, you could define a “virtual site” by right clicking on the respective folder that contained the website, going to Properties, Web Sharing tab, and giving it a name; pretty simple. Well, in Vista and IIS7 it is no longer that simple… for some reason.

Setting up IIS7 in Vista was a bigger hurdle than I thought. Going to Control Panel, Programs and Features, Turn Windows Features on or off and then selecting Internet Information Services left me spending hours trying to figure out why web sharing was not appearing and how to get the iis management console. Why? As said above, Web Sharing via Windows Explorer functionality was simply removed… go ask Microsoft why… and also because, in Vista, the management console must be installed separately. So to be able to manage IIS7, make sure to select to install the IIS Management Console as well…which is under a different branch than the World Wide Web Service; see screenshot below.

Once you selected to install the IIS Management Console as well, you will be able to access it via Control Panel/Administrative Tools/ IIS Manager. Here’s a screenshot of what the new IIS7 manager looks like:

From that point on you’re on your own. I wanted to post this here to spare others some trouble for now.

Keywords: IIS7, IIS 7 Manager, how to manage IIS7, IIS7 web sharing, vista web sharing, configure IIS in Vista, configure IIS7.