How do I set up a connection to my webpage with IIS 6?

Question

I have installed IIS on XP Pro and so far I have something which looks like an ftp server. When I go to the parent directory,I get my default webpage, but it seems that no-one else can connect to it. Somone got "connection refused when attempting to connect to localhost". I have http://localhost and then the name of my computer, but going to my default page only shows http://localhost in the address bar.

Answer 1

If someone is trying to connect to your computer from outside, they need some way of identifying it across the Internet. "localhost" only works from your own computer.

If it's another computer within your home network that's trying to connect, entering the local IP address (probably something like 192.168.0.1) will work.

But if the person who's trying to connect comes from outside your network, you'll need to know the external IP address. If you use a router to connect to the Internet, you need to give your friend the external address of the router - you can probably find that on the router's web interface. You'll also need to set up the router so that it forwards port 80 to the computer where you've set up IIS.

If you connect directly to the Internet via a modem (dial-up or broadband), you can find the IP address by clicking on the connection icon in your taskbar. On the status page there should be an entry with the IP address - something like 123.45.67.123. Give this address to your friend and he should be able to connect.

Answer 2

The IIS by default created the C:\Inetpub\wwwroot?

If yes then you should see that page when you go to http://localhost/

Moreover if you add a folder there you should write lets say http://localhost/Foldername/ and it should show the folder

Well moreover if someone from outside want to connect to your IIS server you should have a real IP and to FTP you should set up an account or make the ftp accepted for anonymous users.

Please can you put the error that the IIS is giving? If you didn’t restart your PC try to restart it and the IIS will run automatically again.

Remember if you have Apache server you should change the Apache port so they can run both on the same machine.

Best regards.

Answer 3

http://localhost/ aka http://127.x.x.x/ only works as you might guess from that computer only. It's the loopback address, the request doesn't even go down to the network interface.

Someone else needs your IP address or machine name like

http://192.168.1.1/ or \\mycomputer\