Adding A Web Site

[This topic is pre-release documentation and is subject to change in future releases. Blank topics are included as placeholders.]

Windows Home Server Setup creates several preconfigured web sites that end-users can use "out of the box." As one of the several ways that you can extend the Windows Home Server platform, you can modify some of the preconfigured Windows Home Server web sites or you can add new web sites to the Windows Home Server computer.

Although an in-depth explanation of how to develop web sites on Internet Information Services (IIS) is beyond the scope of this tutorial, this topic provides key information that you should know before modifying one of the preconfigured web sites or creating a new web site on Windows Home Server.

Modifying Preconfigured Windows Home Server Web Sites

While the Windows Home Server web sites that Setup creates and configures are reserved, you can modify some of the web sites for your own purposes.

Note

As of the Beta release of Windows Home Server, only the web site that is created for remote access (http(s)://ServerName.HomeServer.com/remote) can be modified.

Remote Access Web site

The Windows Home Server remote access web site (http(s)://ServerName.HomeServer.com/remote) can be modified by adding a link to other web sites, both public and secure websites. Additionally, you can use the Windows Home Server Single Unified Sign On feature to pass the user credentials from the Windows Home Server remote access web site to your secure web site, allowing the end-user access to more than one secure web site using only one set of credentials.

Single Unified Sign On

provides the ability for users to log on once to the Windows Home Server remote access web site and then browse from that browser session to your secure web site without having to authenticate again at your secure web site. accomplishes this by passing the end-user's authentication information from the remote access site to your secure site. This is known as Single Unified Sign On.

Using Single Unified Sign On requires the following:

  • Your secure web application is installed and running on the Windows Home Server computer.
  • Your secure web application must read signing and encryption keys from the web.config file for the remote access. These keys are used to authenticate the end-user.

Authentication takes place in three basic steps:

  • The Windows Home Server remote access web site generates an encrypted authentication cookie when the end-user logs on.
  • The HTTP Response back to the client includes the authentication cookie that contains the credentials for the end-user.
  • Your secure Web site locates the cookie in its HTTP request, and uses it to authenticate the user.

Reserved Web sites

The following Web sites are created during Windows Home Server Setup and are reserved for use by Microsoft only:

  • http(s)://ServerName.HomeServer.com
  • http(s)://ServerName.HomeServer.com/home
  • http(s)://ServerName.HomeServer.com/remote
  • http(s)://ServerName.HomeServer.com/documents
  • http(s)://ServerName.HomeServer.com/music
  • http(s)://ServerName.HomeServer.com/photos
  • http(s)://ServerName.HomeServer.com/videos
  • http(s)://ServerName.HomeServer.com/software
  • http(s)://ServerName.HomeServer.com/public
  • http(s)://ServerName.HomeServer.com/computers
  • http(s)://ServerName.HomeServer.com/files
  • http(s)://ServerName.HomeServer.com/folders
  • http(s)://ServerName.HomeServer.com/games

Where ServerName is the name of the Windows Home Server computer.

Adding a new Web site

In addition to modifying some of the Windows Home Server reserved Web sites, you can also add new, custom Web sites to Windows Home Server. The Web sites can be internal to the Windows Home Server network only or accessible to the public.

Guidelines for creating a Web site

In order to properly create a new, custom Web site on the Windows Home Server computer, the following guidelines must be observed:

  • The Web site must be created in a virtual root folder (vroot) under the default IIS website.
  • The name of the vroot must be the same as the intended URL. For example, the vroot named OEM would correspond to ServerName.homeserver.com/OEM.

Additionally, if you want to display a link to your custom Web site on the home page for either the Windows Home Server public or remote access Web site, you must do the following:

  • Create an entry in the Websites.xml for the corresponding public or remote access Web sites. The Websites.xml file is in the %systemdrive%\inetpub\ folder for each site. For example, the Website.xml file for the remote access Web site is in the %systemdrive%\inetpub\remote folder. In order to display, the following information must be present in each Web site link entry in Websites.xml:

    1. The name of the custom Web site, for example, "Fabrikam Photo Publishing Website."
    2. The Web site uniform resource identifier (URI) for the custom Web site.
    3. The URL path to the logo or image that accompanies the Web site link.

    Note

    The image file should be sized at 16 x 16 pixels. If it is smaller or bigger than 16x16, it will be scaled to display at 16 x 16 pixels.

Note

By default, when Windows Home Server is installed, an empty Websites.xml file will be placed in the %systemdrive%\inetpub\home and %systemdrive%\inetpub\remote folders. The default Websites.xml file contains an example Web site link entry that has been commented out that you can use to construct your own Web site link entries.

Custom Web sites that you create that do not have an entry in a Websites.xml file will not be displayed as links on the home page for either the Windows Home Server public or remote access Web site.