HowTo: Set Up Dynamic Content with WebDAV on Internet Information Server
Want to use WebDAV rather than FTP to work with Dynamic Content on an IIS server? Here's how to set it up.

CONTENTS

Stage 1: Create and configure the WebDAV virtual directory
Stage 2: Create the second virtual directory
Stage 3: Configuring the GoLive site
Stage 1: Create and configure the WebDAV virtual directory

Working with WebDAV rather than FTP requires setting up a virtual web directory on the IIS web server specifically to handle the WebDAV side of things. That's what we'll do first.

To create a new virtual directory we need to access the Internet Services Manager. In Windows 2000 you will find that in the Administrative Tools control panel. If that's not where it is on your version of Windows, check the Windows Help for how to get in there.
  • Start > Settings > Control Panel.
  • Double-click on Administrative Tools.
  • Double-click on the Internet Services Manager icon.
  • The Internet Information Server management console, shown below, will open.
Internet Information Services Console
Now, expand the server by clicking on the plus sign beside it (see above) then select the default web site. Right-click on the Default Web Site and choose New > Virtual Directory from the contextual menu.
Create a New Virtual Directory
The virtual directory creation wizard kicks in. Give the directory an alias (a name it is known by on the server - you may want to give it a name which reminds you that it is for WebDAV, not for serving up to a browser). In the screenshot below we have used a name which both reminds us that its for WebDAV and that the site it refers to is a dynamic one.
Create an Alias for the Virtual Directory
Next step is to tie this alias to the location on the web server we want to store our transferred site files. We will point another virtual directory, for actually processing our dynamic content pages, a little later.

Select the Location of the Folder
We now have to set the access permissions for the virtual directory, as below.
Set the Access Permissions
Click next and the vitrual directory wizard is done. We're almost there with the WebDAV virtual directory, but not quite. We need to tweak things just a little. Select the virtual directory you just created in the IIS management console, right-click and choose Properties from the contextual menu.
Open the Virtual Directory Properties
What you see will be the virtual directory properties dialogue. What interests us here is the Application Settings section at the bottom of the virtual directory tab. We have to create a custom application setting which removes ASP (or whichever server-side scripting language we plan to use with the GoLive site) from being processed by the server. This was kindly pointed out by Phil Levy in the Adobe GoLive Dynamic Content User to User Forums. Click on the Create button beside the Application Name box. An application with the same name as the virtual directory will be created.

Create a Custom Application Configuration
After you've done that, the Configuration button will no longer be greyed out. Click on it to enter the application configuration dialogue. Select the .asp extension entry in the App Mappings tab and then hit the Remove button. A confirmation dialogue will ask you to say Yes or No. Just say Yes ;-)
Remove the ASP Extension
If you are setting up dynamic content with ASP, that might seem like it. And it is ... as long as you don't have any application servers installed which might be configured to work with IIS in serving up either PHP or JSP pages. It took me a little while to figure out that the dynamic content wizard was failing on one server machine because there was an application server set up to handle JSP pages. The test run for server-side scripting support always sends a test file for all three of GoLive's supported scripting languages: ASP, PHP and JSP. The JSP page was being handed off for processing and everything ground to a halt. So, the moral of the story is check for any entries for the extensions .php or .jsp and remove them from our custom application too. The screenshot below shows that ColdFusion was set up on this particular machine to handle JSP files. That also has to be removed for the WebDAV virtual directory.
Remove any Extensions handled by App Servers
That's the WebDAV directory set up, so we can now go on and set up the virtual directory that allows GoLive to handle dynamic content and which, of course, allows us to serve up our dynamic pages to a browser.

Stage 2: Create the second virtual directory.