Professional Microsoft IIS 8

Websites, Applications, and Virtual Directories

In IIS 8.0, websites, applications, and virtual directories form a hierarchy of individual objects in the IIS 8.0 schema. Sites are the root object and contain applications. Applications, in turn, contain virtual directories. Every site has at least one application, called the root application and it's signified by (/). Every application also has at least one virtual directory, the root virtual directory, also signified by (/), as shown in Figure 6.1. In IIS 8.0, application boundaries apply to both IIS and the technologies that extend IIS, such as ASP.NET.

Figure 6.1

The relationship among websites, applications, and virtual directories can be one of the more confusing aspects of IIS for new administrators. Having a good understanding of these relationships will significantly ease your IIS administrative headaches.

Websites

A website is a collection of pages, images, video, or other digital content that is available via a common host name (e.g., http://www.mySite.com) or IP address (e.g., http://10.10.10.1). The most common protocols used to access a website are HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol) and HTTPS (HTTP Secure), or its successor, TLS (Transport Layer Security).

Content commonly found within public websites includes HTML, ASPX (ASP.NET), PHP, JSP, Flash, JPG, and PNG formats. These pages can be simple static pages, they ...