I wanted to test Windows 7, a website with Windows Authentication.

Normally it is sufficient, Windows Authentication in "Programs and Features" / "Windows Features" to activate



and then in the IIS Manager to enable:



When you call the page, however, to my astonishment, I received a popup to enter the user data:



After I entered the credentials three times, I received the following error:



The reason for this is that I've given the site its own host header.

Produces the result that the loopback check, which was introduced with Windows XP SP2 (and apparently also in Windows 7 is used), fails, and the above error message with the Error Code 0xc000006d.

The behavior and the remedy is in KB896861 described.

With IIS 7 url rewriting and redirecting has never been easier thanks to Microsoft’s Url Rewrite module. The rewriting is done by rules which are specified in the web.config under <system.webserver> element. Using IIS Manager you can use the Url Rewrite gui to create and maintain your rules.

You can also just put the rules directly into the web.config without using the gui. For example:

<system.webserver>
 <rewrite>
 <rules>
 <rule name="xyz">...blah...</rule>
 </rules>
 <rewrite>
</system.webserver>

IIS 7 Url Rewrite WWW

One of the most common needs for SEO is to force your site to use www for all page requests so that search engines will go to www.mydomain.com instead of domain.com. This is very easy to do with IIS 7′s Url Rewrite. Here is the rule:

<rewrite>
<rules>
<rule name=”Redirect to www” patternSyntax=”Wildcard” stopProcessing=”true”>  
<match url=”*” />
<conditions>
<add input=”{HTTP_HOST}” pattern=”abc.com” />
  </conditions>
 <action type=”Redirect” url=”http://www.abc.com/{R:0}” />
</rule>
</rules>
<rewrite>

This works really well and it is a completely seamless experience for your web site visitors.  Here is how the rule looks in the IIS Manager gui.

IIS 7 Url Rewrite HTTP to HTTPS

Probably the 2nd most common use of Url Rewrite is for sites that have SSL certificates installed and need to seamlessly redirect page requests using the certificate for either the entire site or a particular folder. Here is the Url Rewrite rule for redirecting requests on the entire site. You simply detect if the request is not secure and then redirect to the secure channel:

<rewrite>
 <rules>
 <rule name="HTTP Redirect to HTTPS" enabled="true" stopProcessing="true">
 <match url="(.*)" ignoreCase="false" />
 <conditions>
 <add input="{HTTPS}" pattern="off" />
 </conditions>
 <action type="Redirect" url="https://{HTTP_HOST}/{R:1}" appendQueryString="true" redirectType="Permanent" />
 </rule>
 </rules>
 </rewrite>

IIS 7 Url Rewrite HTTP to HTTPS on Subfolder

The example above is great but running your entire site in HTTPS will have a performance impact so you don’t need to do it unless there is a specific business requirement for it. So then we need a rule to redirect requests to HTTPS for just one folder. In this example we’ll use a folder called “/secure”. In this instance we use the same rule as above however now we only want page requests for the “secure” folder. This is done by modifying the “match url” element.

<rewrite>
 <rules>
  <rule name="HTTPS on subfolder" enabled="true">
         <match url="(^secure/.*)" ignoreCase="false" />
         <conditions>
             <add input="{HTTPS}" pattern="off" />
         </conditions>
         <action type="Redirect" url="https://{HTTP_HOST}/{R:1}" appendQueryString="true" redirectType="Permanent" />
     </rule>
 <rules>
 <rewrite>

We’ve covered 3 of the most common uses of IIS 7 Url Rewrite but if you notice the rules above are really for redirecting and not url rewriting.

This is the error message that sometimes you can find on IIS:

Server Error in ‘/’ Application.

Configuration Error

Description: An error occurred during the processing of a configuration file required to service this request. Please review the specific error details below and modify your configuration file appropriately.

Parser Error Message: It is an error to use a section registered as allowDefinition=’MachineToApplication’ beyond application level.  This error can be caused by a virtual directory not being configured as an application in IIS.

I will gonna show you how to fix this issue. What is the issue?

1. When you create an new web application using visual studio.net, it automatically creates the virtual directory and configures it as an application. However, if you manually create the virtual directory and it is not configured as an application, then you will not be able to browse the application and may get the above error. The debug information you get as mentioned above, is applicable to this scenario.

To resolve it, Right Click on the virtual directory - select properties and then click on "Create" next to the "Application" Label and the textbox. It will automatically create the "application" using the virtual directory's name. Now the application can be accessed.

2. When you have sub-directories in your application, you can have web.config file for the sub-directory. However, there are certain properties which cannot be set in the web.config of the sub-directory such as authentication, session state (you may see that the error message shows the line number where the
authentication or sessionstate is declared in the web.config of the sub-directory). The reason is, these settings cannot be overridden at the sub-directory level unless the sub-directory is also configured as an application (as mentioned in the above point).

Mostly we have the practice of adding web.config in the sub-directory if we want to protect access to the sub-directory files (say, the directory is admin and we wish to protect the admin pages from unathorized users).

But actually, this can be achieved in the web.config at the application's root level itself, by specifing the location path tags and authorization, as follows:-

<location path="Admin">
<system.web>
<authorization>
<allow roles="administrators" />
<deny users="*" />
</authorization>
</system.web>
</location>

However, if you wish to have a web.config at the sub-directory level and protect the sub-directory, you can just specify the Authorization mode as follows:-

<configuration>
<system.web>
<authorization>
<allow roles="administrators" />
<deny users="*" />
</authorization>
</system.web>
</configuration>

Thus you can protect the sub-directory from unauthorized access.