This section describes how to administer your server and Web sites by using the many tools and features developed in Internet Information Services (IIS) 6.0 to improve server management, performance, reliability, and security. This section also includes conceptual information regarding some of the key changes to the IIS architecture and to the metabase.
Important
To help minimize the attack surface of the server, IIS 6.0 is not installed on Windows Server 2003 by default. When you first install IIS 6.0, it is locked down — which means that only request handling for static Web pages is enabled, and only the World Wide Web Publishing Service (WWW service) is installed. None of the features that sit on top of IIS are turned on, including ASP, ASP.NET, CGI scripting, FrontPage® 2002 Server Extensions from Microsoft, and WebDAV publishing. If you do not enable these features, IIS returns a 404 error. You can enable these features through the Web Service Extensions node in IIS Manager. For more information about how to troubleshoot 404 errors and other issues, see Troubleshooting.
This section includes the following information:
• IIS Metabase: Describes the IIS 6.0 Extensible Markup Language (XML) metabase, a hierarchical repository for most IIS configuration values.
• Web Site Administration: Describes how to manage Web site infrastructure, including how to manage multiple Web sites, redirect requests, and restart IIS.
• FTP Site Administration: Describes how to manage File Transfer Protocol (FTP) site infrastructure, including multiple FTP sites, data transmission, and user isolation.
• NNTP Administration: Describes how to manage Network News Transfer Protocol (NNTP) site infrastructure, including restricting access to newsgroups, configuring expiration policies, and NNTP security.
• SMTP Administration: Describes how to manage Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) site infrastructure, including setting connections, protocol logging, and SMTP security.
• Configuring Applications: Describes how to configure IIS Manager so that various applications — including Microsoft® Active Server Pages (ASP), Internet Service API (ISAPI), and Common Gateway Interfaces (CGI) — run on your IIS server.
• Configuring Servers for Applications: Describes how to enable IIS to run in either IIS 5.0 application isolation mode or worker process isolation mode. Also describes how to enable dynamic content in IIS 6.0.
• Using Command-Line Administration Scripts: Describes how to use scripts to perform server administration tasks.
• Administering IIS Programmatically: Introduces the three programmatic interfaces that are supported by IIS 6.0.
