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Setting Up Default Documents

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Applies To: Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2003 R2, Windows Server 2003 with SP1

You can establish a default document for client requests to a Web site that does not specify a document name. Default documents can be a directory's home page or an index page. Before enabling the default document in IIS Manager, you must create the default document and place it in either the root directory or a virtual directory on the appropriate Web site.

You cannot use commas in a default document name (for example, my,file.html). Commas are used only to delimit multiple default documents in the metabase. If you include a comma in the name of a default document, IIS uses the comma to notate two default documents.

Important

You must be a member of the Administrators group on the local computer to perform the following procedure or procedures. As a security best practice, log on to your computer by using an account that is not in the Administrators group, and then use the runas command to run IIS Manager as an administrator. At a command prompt, type runas /User:Administrative_AccountName "mmc %systemroot%\system32\inetsrv\iis.msc".

Procedures

To set up or change the default document

  1. In IIS Manager, double-click the local computer, right-click the Web Sites folder or an individual Web site folder, and then click Properties.

    Note

    Configuration settings made at the Web Sites level are inherited by all of the Web sites on the server. You can override inheritance by configuring the individual site or site element.

  2. Click the Documents tab.

  3. Select the Enable default content page check box.

  4. Click Add to add a new default document to the list.

  5. Click the document you want to remove from the list and click Remove.

  6. Click a document from the list and click Move Up or Move down to change the order in which default documents are served to client requests.

  7. Click OK.