Peter McBride

A 20-year veteran of multimedia design, Pete has been working with Flash since its FutureSplash infancy, garnering numerous awards and recognitions along the way. Considered a pioneer in whatever-it-is we actually do, one of his earliest designs was recently placed in the Smithsonian Institution as a landmark point in the history of computing. In addition to Flash, Pete is an avid JavaScript and CSS addict, with a specialization in cross-language interaction.

View all articles by Peter McBride
You're now ready to configure IIS. We're going to set up something called a "virtual directory" that points to your Dev folder, so that when you type in http://localhost/dev/ you'll be served up the contents of that folder. That's basically what a virtual directory is – it's a directory in a URL that refers to

Go to Start: Control Panel: Administrative tools: Internet Information Services. Welcome to IIS.

Expand your (local computer) on the Tree view on the left, then expand "Web Sites". Right-click "Default Web Site" and select "New> Virtual Directory…"

Enter an Alias – this is the name of the folder as it will appear in a url, ie to create http://localhost/devtest/ you'd just enter "devtest". Hit Next, then hit the Browse button and point to that Dev folder we created in step one. When Access permissions appears, select "Read" "Run Scripts" and "Write" (I'm not sure about Write, but heck, this is development, not production).

IIS is now configured, and anything you throw into your dev folder is now available in a browser at url http://localhost/devtest/ or from other machines at http://(your ip address)/foo/ (Okay, figuring out your ip address so others can see you is a lesson in itself!)

BUT… we're only halfway there. This is a database application, so we need to grant network write permission to the folder your files are stored in. To do this, right-click your Dev folder from step one, select "Properties" and go to the "Sharing" tab. Check "Share this folder on the Network" and "Allow network users to change my files". Depending on your system, something similar may show up, but you get the general gist of it. This allows the data base to be written to via the network.