Microsoft Internet Information Server Management (MS
IIS)
How can you allow users on a network to publish their own pages to an Intranet
without the fear of others editing their work? With IIS its easy.
MS IIS is provided with Microsoft Windows NT Server. By default the server delivers
pages from the directory wwwroot on drive D:. Everyone has read access to this directory
via the internet address http://intranet, and pages located here can be browsed simply by
entering this address.
The only person with full access to this directory is the Administrator. Obviously it
is simple to provide other users or groups with full access so that they could author web
pages directly to this server root directory. However, this is likely to create management
problems.
The following procedure describes how the Administrator (or nominee) can create a
virtual directory structure that will allow users to author web pages directly to their
own MYWORK area and make those pages automatically available for browsing by any user on
the intranet.
Although there is significant work initially in creating the web server structures this
procedure requires no intervention or management once it has been created.
The Procedure
- Open IIS. Your server will almost certainly be called server1. The WWW (World Wide Web)
or http service is running by default. Double click on server1 to show the WWW service
properties.
- Don't alter anything. The default port for TCP is 80. Click on the directories tab.
- This area allows you to add or remove virtual directories. You may wish to change the
default document name from Default.htm to index.html (case sensitive). Note that MS
Publisher creates homepages with file name index.html. Directory browsing is best left
disabled - enabling it will mean that if a browser specifies a page name that does not
exist, a directory will be displayed that will reveal other page names. This may not be
desirable.
- Clicking on the Add button displays the Directory Properties page. Use the browse button
to point to an appropriate directory eg. a member of staffs Mywork area. The path for this
directory may be D:/users/staff/earth31/mywork/myweb. If the work area has not got a
subdirectory called myweb or something similar, create one now.
- It is now necessary to create an alias for this directory - this alias can be any name
you like. However it would make sense to adopt a logical structure that matches your
existing user structure. In the above example we could choose earth31web as the alias.
Type this in making sure that Virtual Directoty is ticked and click ok. WWW services now
includes the virtual directory you have just added.
- We now have to set permissions for the "myweb" subdirectory of Earth31's
Mywork area to allow EVERYONE READ access. Open up Explorer, find the directory, right
click and choose properties. The Interbet tab shows the virtual directory if it exists for
this directory. Click on the security tab and then the Permissions button.
- We now need to add a permission for Everyone. Click on Add. Choose Everyone from the
list inside the Add Users and Groups dialogue box and click Add. Everyone is added with
the default Permission READ. Click Ok.
This procedure will allow the directory D:\users\staff\earth31\Mywork\Myweb to become
available across the Intranet with the address http://intranet/earth31web.
The users can publish directly into Mywork\Myweb and it will be available to everyone
else at the web address http://intranet/earth31web.
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