You can save the current settings for the MMC at any time by clicking the
Save button on the toolbar or selecting Save from the File menu in the main MMC
window. The MMC saves its settings in an .msc file. If you look at the title bar
in Screens 1 and 2, you see that the MMC is using the file iis.msc. This
filename is the default for MMC after you download IIS 4.0. By default, IIS 4.0
places its MMC files in the \WinntRoot\System32\InetSrv folder.
The MMC file stores the current settings for your MMC workspace just like
many other NT tools. When you select Internet Service Manager from the Programs
menu, you are selecting a shortcut, which executes the following command:
C:\WINNT\system32\mmc.exe C:\WINNT\System32\inetsrv\iis.msc
This command starts mmc.exe and passes it the full path to the iis.msc file.
You can use different MMC files by opening each file with the Open option
on the File menu or by clicking the Open icon on the toolbar. You can also open
an MMC file by double-clicking the filename in Explorer or creating an icon on
the desktop or Start menu for the MMC file. Finally, you can email MMC files or
put them on a network share so that everyone can access them.
Managing IIS 4.0 with the MMC
Now that you understand the basics of the MMC's operations, you can begin to
learn how to use the MMC interface to manage IIS. One of the first steps I took
after installing IIS 4.0 was to create a new Web site. I decided this task would
be a good test of the features that the MMC and the IIS snap-in provide.
To start the creation process, I right-clicked the server name in the Scope
pane. Next, I selected the Create option, and selected Create New and Web Site
to start the New Web Site Wizard.
The New Web Site Wizard walked me through a series of dialog boxes during
the Web site creation process. The first dialog box let me enter a description
for the new Web site I was creating. The next dialog box, as you see in Screen
3
, determined the TCP/IP address and port number for the site (Screen 3 shows
the default values for these settings).
Screen 4 shows the next dialog box, which asked me to enter the name of the
subdirectory for my Web site's home directory. I discovered that the
subdirectory you enter in this dialog box must already exist--the New Web Site
Wizard won't create this subdirectory for you.
Next, the New Web Site Wizard asked me to configure access permissions for
my Web site, as you see in Screen 5. I checked the Allow Script Access (the
default options allow only Read access). After I configured the access
permissions, I clicked Finish to create my Web site. The new Web site appeared
in the Results pane when I selected the server's name.
Changing a Site's Configuration
You can change almost any property or parameter you set during installation
at some later point. The easiest way to make these changes is to right-click the
site name (in either pane of the MMC), and select Properties from the context
menu. A Properties dialog box similar to the one you see in Screen 6 appears.
Each page in the Properties dialog box lets you set options related to that
particular page. When you first access the Properties dialog box, you see the
Web Site properties page. You can see from Screen 6 that you can quickly change
some settings, such as the site description and the site's TCP/IP address.
You entered some of the settings on the Properties pages when you created
the Web site, and other settings are the default values that come with the
default Web site (a standard Web site that ships with IIS 4.0 and points to any
subdirectories under \wwwroot, the default site directory). You can use the
Properties pages to modify the default Web site, just like any other site.
Onward and Upward
The new MMC management feature plays a major part in IIS 4.0, but it's by no
means the only feature. You have to dig into IIS 4.0 to discover additional
features and how they work. Some of these features include
* Integration with other products, such as MTS, Internet News Server, and
Site Analyst
* New ASP features, such as the integration with MTS, the new script
debugger, and new options for Visual Basic Script
* The ability to create a hierarchy of virtual directories
* New IIS Web site features, such as new options for each site, settings for
the default Web site, isolation of applications, and the handling of FrontPage
Server Extensions for each Web site
* The Posting Acceptor, which lets you post information from a browser to a
Web site
IIS 4.0 contains many other options hidden behind the GUI. I'll discuss many
of these options in future articles.