Introducing ASP.NET—Installing the Web Server

Microsoft .NET Framework, ASP.NET, Visual C# (CSharp, C Sharp, C-Sharp) Developer Training, Visual Studio

Installing the Web Server

Installing Internet Information Services (IIS)

IIS comes with most versions of server-capable Windows operating systems—including Windows 2000 Professional, Server, and Advanced Server; Windows XP Professional; Windows XP Media Center Edition; and Windows Server 2003—but it’s not installed automatically in all versions, which is why it may not be present on your computer. IIS isn’t available for Home editions of these operating systems, such as Windows XP Home Edition. If you run this, you’ll need to rely on Cassini, which we discuss below.

To see whether you have IIS installed and running, simply locate your Administrative Tools folder (sometimes it’s a menu option; sometimes it’s a folder in the Control Panel[To see this folder, you’ll need to view the Control Panel in "classic view."]) and check whether or not it contains a shortcut to Internet Information Services. If the shortcut isn’t visible, then it’s not installed. To install IIS, simply follow these steps:

1. In the Control Panel, select Add or Remove Programs.

2. Choose Add/Remove Windows Components. The list of components will become visible within a few seconds.

3. In the list of components, check Internet Information Services (IIS), as shown in Figure 1.2, "Installing IIS". The default installation options are enough for ASP.NET development, but you may want to click Details… to view the extra options you could add.

Figure 1.2. Installing IIS

4. Click Next. Windows may prompt you to insert the Windows CD.

Add Administrative Tools to the Start Menu

Here’s how to add Administrative Tools to the Windows XP Start menu:

1. Right-click on the Start button and select Properties to bring up the Taskbar and Start Menu Properties dialog.

2. Click the Customize… button to bring up the Customize Start Menu dialog.

3. If you’re using the classic Start menu, check Display Administrative Tools, then click OK.

4. If you’re using the Windows XP-style Start menu, click the Advanced tab, scroll through the Start menu items list until you get to System Administrative Tools, and select from Display on the All Programs menu or Display in the All Programs menu and the Start menu.

Once IIS is installed, close the Add or Remove Programs dialog. To check that IIS has installed correctly, see if you can find the Internet Information Services short cut in Administrative Tools. If you can, IIS is installed. Open the link to make first contact with the IIS management console, which is shown in Figure 1.3, "The IIS administration tool". In the left pane, you’ll initially see the name of your computer, whose nodes you can expand.

Figure 1.3. The IIS administration tool

You can close this tool for now; you’ll meet it again later.

You are now ready to host web applications. Although we won’t cover the configuration of IIS for external use, we will show you how to configure IIS to support local development of ASP.NET applications in order that they may be uploaded to your external web hosting provider later.

Installing Cassini

If you’re unable to install IIS, you’ll need to download and install Cassini:

1. Go to the Cassini download page.

2. Download the Cassini installer executable (cassini.exe).

3. Run cassini.exe and follow the steps presented by the installer, accepting the default options.

If the process went to plan, everything you need to run Cassini can be found in the folder C:\Cassini. Double-click CassiniWebServer.exe in that folder to start its management console, which is shown in Figure 1.4, "The Cassini management console".

Figure 1.4. The Cassini management console

We’ll need to do some more work to get Cassini up and running properly, but we’ll need to install the .NET Framework and the Software Development Kit first.