Provide a better user experience for visitors to your Web site

Applies To: Windows Server 2008 R2

You can configure default HTTP settings to provide a better user experience for visitors to your Web site. For example, you can configure IIS to return custom error messages whenever an HTTP error occurs. Custom error messages can provide friendlier or more informative feedback. You can also configure IIS to serve either a default document or a list of all the documents available from the server. Customers who do not specify the name of a document would be presented with either a default page or a list of all available pages, depending on the HTTP settings configuration.

Notes

  Step Reference

Configure whether IIS returns custom or detailed errors when an HTTP error occurs, and add custom error pages for specific HTTP errors.

Configuring Error Pages

Configure a list of default documents that can be returned to clients who do not specify a document name in a request, and, depending on your needs, enable or disable this feature for specific sites, applications, or directories.

Configuring Default Documents

Configure whether a directory listing is returned to clients who do not specify a document name in a request, and, depending on your needs, enable or disable this feature for specific sites, applications, or directories.

Configuring Directory Browsing

Configure custom headers to include in the server's HTTP response header.

Configuring HTTP Response Headers

Specify the types of content that can be served to a browser or mail client by configuring Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (MIME) types on the server.

Configuring MIME Types

Configure redirection settings to redirect clients to a different directory than the requested directory, or to redirect them to a different URL.

Configuring HTTP Redirection

See Also

Other Resources

Web Server on Tech Center (online)