Adding Web Sites to an IIS 6.0 Server

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

IIS enables you to create multiple Web sites on a single server. To add a site to a server, you must prepare the server and associated network services, and create a unique identity for the site.

Preparing to Add a Web Site

Adding a Web site to a server that is already hosting a Web site requires some preparation before you run the Web Site Creation Wizard. Consider the following recommendations in your preparation process:

  • Carefully review the methods of hosting multiple Web sites to determine which method of creating unique Web site identities is appropriate for your environment.

  • Decide if you will use a unique IP address to identify your Web site. Multiple Web sites can use the same IP address. If you use a unique IP address to identify a new Web site, you must obtain a static IP address from your organization or Internet service provider (ISP) and configure the TCP/IP settings on the server.

  • Select a unique host header name, if you use host header names to identify a new Web site, On a private network, the host header can be an intranet site name. On the Internet, the host header must be a publicly available Domain Name System (DNS) name, such as support.microsoft.com. Register the public DNS name with an authorized Internet name authority.

  • Update your name resolution system (typically DNS) with a new record that contains the new IP address and name of the site. For more information, see Domain Name Resolution.

  • Determine whether you need to use a non-standard TCP port number. Standard Internet services use TCP port 80 by default and it is generally not recommended to use any other port for HTTP services. However, if you use a non-standard TCP port number to identify a new Web site for special situations (private Web sites frequently use alternative TCP port numbers for development and testing purposes), select a TCP port number above 1023 so it does not conflict with well-known port numbers assigned by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority.

  • Use Windows Explorer to create a home directory for the Web site content. Create subdirectories to store HTML pages, image files, and other content as needed. To organize home directories for multiple Web sites on the same server, you can create a top-level directory for storing all home directories, and then create subdirectories for each site. You can create a home directory on the local server, as a Universal Naming Convention (UNC) path on a network share, or as a URL that redirects clients to a different Web server. You can also create virtual directories that map to the physical directories. For more information, see Setting Home Directories.

  • Determine whether to generate the Web site identification number incrementally, or from the Web site name. When you create a new site on IIS 6.0, a Web site identification number is randomly generated using the name of the Web site. With IIS 5.1 and earlier versions, site identification numbers were generated incrementally. For example, because the default Web site is created first, its Web site identification number is 1; and the next site created is identified as 2. For more information, see IncrementalSiteIDCreation in Global Registry Entries.

  • Create a home page that clearly identifies the new Web site.