Set-up an FTP Server on Windows 2003 Server

Setting up an FTP server on Windows 2003 Server is a pretty simple process.  Why would you need an FTP server?  Well, if you are hosting websites you might want to allow designers and customers access to their webfolders  (not me… no one accesses my server but me but you can.. ) and an FTP server is a great way to allow them access.  OR some Commercial Copiers have a scan to FTP or SMB service so, you could install an FTP server to allow a central place to save scanned documents.  Needless to say there are many reasons why you might need one and with Server 2003 it’s “Easy Cheesy”.

The Microsoft FTP server depends on the Microsoft Internet Information Services (IIS),  so  IIS and the FTP Service must be installed on the computer.   To install IIS and the FTP Service, follow these steps:

These instructions can also be found at Microsoft’s Support site.

NOTE: In Windows Server 2003, the FTP Service is not installed by default when you install IIS.   If you already installed IIS on the computer, you must use the Add or Remove Programs tool in Control Panel to install the FTP Service.

1. Click Start, point to Control Panel, and then click Add or Remove Programs.
2. Click Add/Remove Windows Components.
3. In the Components list, click Application Server, click Internet Information Services (IIS) (but do not select or clear the check box), and then click Details.
4. Click to select the following check boxes (if they are not already selected):
   Common Files
   File Transfer Protocol (FTP) Service
   Internet Information Services Manager
5. Click to select the check boxes next to any other IIS-related service or subcomponent that you want to install, and then click OK.
6. Click Next.
7. When you are prompted, insert the Windows Server 2003 CD-ROM into the computer’s CD-ROM or DVD-ROM drive or provide a path to the location of the files, and then click OK.
8. Click Finish.

You have now installed the IIS and FTP services but before you can start using your new FTP you must configure it. To configure the FTP Service follow these steps.

To configure the FTP Service to allow only anonymous connections:

1. Start Internet Information Services Manager or open the IIS snap-in.
2. Expand Server_name, where Server_name is the name of the server.
3. Expand FTP Sites
4. Right-click Default FTP Site, and then click Properties.
5. Click the Security Accounts tab.
6. Click to select the Allow Anonymous Connections check box (if it is not already selected), and then click to select the Allow only anonymous connections check box.  When you click to select the Allow only anonymous connections check box, you configure the FTP Service to allow only anonymous connections. Users cannot log on by using user names and passwords.
7. Click the Home Directory tab.
8. Click to select the Read and Log visits check boxes (if they are not already selected), and then click to clear the Write check box (if it is not already cleared).
9. Click OK.
10. Quit Internet Information Services Manager or close the IIS snap-in.

The FTP server is now configured to accept incoming FTP requests. Copy or move the files that you want to make available to the FTP publishing folder for access.  The default folder is drive:\Inetpub\Ftproot, where drive is the drive on which IIS is installed.

Anonymous access only is not a good way to leave your newly installed FTP server if your intent was to give users the ability to upload files and not merely to download.  So, in the next couple of days we’ll go over setting up virtual FTP sites and assign usernames and passwords to access each as well as giving those users read and write access to their folders.

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IIS 6: Adding Footers to Web Pages

Did you know you can configure the Microsoft IIS 6 web server to automatically insert an HTML-formatted file to the bottom of every web page sent out by your Web Server?  Well, you can.

For example, you host several sites and want to add a link back to your company for advertisement.  You could create a simple HTML file that contained a text message and an image that you hyperlink back to your web site.  Then enable the footer function in IIS 6.

Once you enable this feature, IIS automatically appends the footer file to the designated Web page or file each time the Web page or file is accessed.  *Note the following info from Microsoft:

Document footers can reduce Web server performance, especially if a Web page is frequently accessed.

A footer file should be not be a complete HTML document.  It should contain only those HTML tags necessary for formatting the appearance of footer content.  For example, a footer file that adds your organization’s name to the bottom of every page should consist of text and the HTML tags necessary for formatting the font and color.

To enable this feature of IIS 6, you will need to be a member of the Administrators group on the local computer. (As well as have Console or Remote Desktop access)

Once logged onto the desktop follow these steps:

1. Create an HTML file containing your footer informtion and save it your server’s hard drive.
2. In IIS Manager, expand the local computer, expand the Web Sites folder, right-click a Web site, directory, or file, and click Properties.
3. Click the Documents tab, and select the Enable document footer check box.
4. In the box below Enable document footer, type either the full local path to the footer file or click Browse to navigate to it.
5. Click OK.

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Pretty URLS for WordPress on IIS

I’ve been playing around with my site again. Trying to work out the beauty of my urls. I thought they looked pretty good… Well, similar to what I’m used to from BlogCFC anyway. The urls were like this: www.owenwebs.com/index.php/xxxx/xxx/xxx etc.. Which is not too bad… Better than the default: owenwebs.com/?p=13 or something silly like that. But, I’ve seen them better around the web. And made it a goal to get mine to work that way also.

After a bunch of Google-ing I found several solutions for IIS and settled on this solution for my “Pretty Permalinks“. This utilizes a ISAPI url rewriter from Dean Lee. Here’s how I went about making it work:

First, to use this method you will need to have desktop and Administrator access to yuor Windows Server. If you have that, go download the latest zip for your OS from the  Google Code repository.

1. Unzip the recently downloaded  file to a new or existing directory. You will see the file called “wp-url-rewriting.dll” once you “unzip”.
2. Open the Internet Information Services (IIS) Manager.  You can get to this by clicking  “Start” then “All Programs” then “Administrative Tools” then “Internet Service Manager (IIS) Manager”.
3. Expand the “Web site” directory and select the icon for your website. For example, if you are using the “Default Web Site” for WordPress you would click that icon.
4. Right-click the icon and select “Properties” from the menu.
5. Click the “ISAPI Filters” tab and then click the “Add” button.
6. Choose a name for the ISAPI filter and type it in the “Filter name” field.
7. Click “Browse” and select the ISAPI filter (wp-url-rewriting.dll) that you unzipped into the directory in step 1.
8. Click “OK.”

Check in the ISAPI filter area to make sure the status of the new “.dll” has a green arrow pointing upward. If you see that arrow, that indicates the filter is working properly. If you dont see the green arrow you will need to “stop” and “restart” the IIS Admin service.

Next you need to configure WordPress to use the new Permalinks. To do this:

1. Login to the Admin panel and navigate to Options –> Permalinks.
2. Choose permalink structure the click “Custom Structure”  and remove “index.php” from the url.  The new structure should look something like this: /%year%/%monthnum%/%day%/%postname%/
3. Save your changes.

That’s it… Load your Website and refresh the changes, you should now have nice pretty permalinks. And, if like me, you started off using something like http://yourwebsite.com/index.php/page1 then those old urls should still work as well. So no lost traffic.

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Windows 2003 Server does not stream FLV videos

I was having some trouble today getting a flash file to work. I was trying to stream a FLV (Flash video) file and although it was working great on my local machine it would not stream when I loaded it up on my server.

The SWF file would play, well.. the controls would come up but the file wouldn't stream.. I waisted a lot of time moving files around and re-making before I found this. Like always, thought I'd share..

Issue:

When Flash Player movie files that stream external FLV files (Flash videos) are placed on a Microsoft Windows 2003 server and then viewed in a browser, the SWF file plays correctly, but the FLV video does not stream. These files work correctly if tested on other operating systems. The issue affects all FLV files played via Windows 2003 server, including files made with the Flash Video Kit for Dreamweaver MX 2004.

Reason:

With IIS 6.0, Microsoft changed the way streaming media is handled. Previous versions of IIS did not require any modification to stream Flash Video. Microsoft IIS 6.0, the default web server that ships with Windows 2003, requires a MIME type to recognize that FLV files are streamed media.

Solution:

On the Windows 2003 server, open the Internet Information Services Manager.

Expand the Local Computer Server.

Right-click the local computer server and select Properties.

Select the MIME Types tab.

Click New and enter the following information:

Associated Extension box: .FLV

MIME Type box:flv-application/octet-stream

Click OK.

Restart the World Wide Web Publishing service.

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