Migrating a Web Server to IIS 5.0

Completing Web Site Migration

This section describes some additional steps you might need to take when migrating Web sites in order to restore hyperlinks, set up user Web sites, and replicate (or add) special features such as server-side includes, redirects, and directory indexes.

Repairing Hyperlinks

When you migrate Web pages, you need to find and repair any hyperlinks within them that were broken due to changes you might have made in the original Web site directory structure. You can use FrontPage features for testing and repairing hyperlinks, not only for internal URLs, but for those referring to external sites on the Internet as well.

Note It is not recommended that you install the FrontPage client on the same computer as IIS 5.0. Instead, use FrontPage on a development computer to check and repair hyperlinks. Then publish the files to the computer running IIS 5.0, using the Web publishing features of FrontPage.

Setting up User Web Sites

IIS 5.0 provides the following options for implementing user Web sites, which are common in most Internet service provider (ISP) and volume hosting environments:

Host Headers Implementing the HTTP 1.1 host header standard, you can create multiple Web sites on a single IIS server that share the same IP address. For browsers that do not support the HTTP 1.1 standard, IIS displays the home page for the Default Web Site and can be configured to send a cookie that automatically redirects users to the selected site on their next visit. For this reason, it is recommended that ISPs use the Default Web Site for their Web site, rather than for a customer Web site. This Web site can then display links to customer Web sites.
IP Addressing You can create multiple Web sites by assigning each one a unique IP address.
Unique Port Numbers You can create multiple Web sites by assigning each one a unique port number. For sites using something other than port 80, which is the default, users must append the port number to the URL to access the site. For example, http://www.microsoft.com/IIS:82 would access a Web site named IIS that uses port 82.

For more information about implementing these methods, see the “Web and FTP Sites” and “Name Resolution” topics in the IIS 5.0 online product documentation.

Implementing Special Web Features

IIS 5.0 supports many popular Web site features, such as directory browsing and indexing, document footers, and server-side includes. The following paragraphs describe some features you might want to implement on your Web sites.

Directory Browsing and Indexing You can enable directory browsing and indexing on the Home Directory tab of Web Site Properties.
Document Footers You can specify a document footer on the Enable Document Footer tab of Web Site Properties. For more information about document footers, see the “Adding a Footer to Web Pages” topic in the IIS 5.0 online product documentation.
Dynamically Updated Content For content that must be frequently updated, you can generate dynamic Web pages by using ASP and HTML templates. IIS 5.0 builds pages on-the-fly from content that is dynamically extracted from a database. For more information about dynamic content, see Data Access and Transactions in this book.
Personalized Content By using Dynamic HTML (DHTML) or the Browser Capabilities Component you can detect user browser capabilities to provide personalized content based on the user environment. For more information, see the “Client Capabilities” topic in the IIS 5.0 section of the SDK documentation on MSDN.
Redirection (HTTP redirect) You can specify redirection from a Web site to another URL on the Home Directory tab of Web Site Properties.
Server-Side Includes IIS 5.0 supports server-side includes. A Web page that has included information must have the .stm file name extension. The virtual directory containing the .stm files must have either script or execute permissions enabled.
Time-Sensitive Content To direct the user’s browser to expire cached content at a specific date and time, you can enable content expiration on the HTTP Headers tab of Web Site Properties.