Use this tab to set a friendly name for your Web site, configure access to your Web site, set connection limits to your site, and enable logging and configure the logging format for your site.

Web site identification

In order for browsers to access your Web content, both an IP address and TCP port number must be defined.

Description

Type a friendly name for your Web site. The friendly name appears in the console tree of IIS Manager.

IP address

Assign an IP address from the list box or type a new IP address to be used for accessing this site. If you do not assign a specific IP address, this site responds to all IP addresses assigned to this computer and not assigned to other sites, which makes this the default Web site. For an IP address to appear in the list, the IP address must have already been defined for use on this computer in Control Panel. See Windows Server 2003 family Help for more information. The description of the site is not required.

TCP port

Assign the TCP port on which the Web service is running; the default for the Web service is port 80. You can change the port to any unique TCP port number, but if you change the port number, clients must know in advance to request that port number, or their requests fail to connect to your server. A port number is required; this text box cannot be left blank.

SSL port

Assign the SSL port that is to be associated with this Web site identity. The default SSL port number is 443. You can change the SSL port to any unique TCP port number, but to connect to your server, clients must know in advance to request that port number, in order to connect to your server. An SSL port number is required only if SSL encryption is used. Otherwise, if SSL encryption is not enabled for your site, the SSL Port box is unavailable.

Advanced

Click to further configure the IP address, TCP port number, and Host Header value that are used to access to your site.

Connections

You can set the length of time in seconds before the server disconnects an inactive user. This ensures that all connections are closed if the HTTP protocol fails to close a connection. Most Web browsers ask the server to keep the connection open across multiple requests. This is referred to as an HTTP Keep-Alive, an HTTP specification that allows for greatly enhanced server performance. Without it, a browser has to make numerous connection requests for a page containing multiple elements, such as graphics. A separate connection may need to be made for each element. These additional requests and connections require additional server activity and resources, decreasing server efficiency. Additional requests also make a browser much slower and less responsive, especially across a high-latency (slow) connection. HTTP Keep-Alives are enabled by default during the installation process.

Connection timeout

Type a number in the box to set the length of time in seconds before the server disconnects an inactive user. This ensures that all connections are closed if the HTTP protocol fails to close a connection.

Enable HTTP Keep-Alives

Select to enable a client to maintain an open connection with your server, rather than re-opening the client connection with each new request. Disabling Keep-Alives may degrade server performance. HTTP Keep-Alives are enabled by default.

Enable Logging

Select this option to enable your Web site's logging features, which records details about user activity and creates logs in your choice of format.

The information is stored in ASCII files or an ODBC-compliant database. Logging information in IIS goes beyond the scope of the event-logging or performance-monitoring features of Microsoft ® Windows®. The logs can include information such as who has visited your site, what the visitor viewed, and when the information was viewed last. You can use the logs to assess content popularity or identify information bottlenecks.

Active log format

Select one of the following formats for the log files.

Properties

Click to configure options for log file creation (for example, weekly, or by file size), or to configure properties for W3C Extended logging or ODBC logging.

Related Topics

To learn more about naming Web sites, encrypting data with SSL, HTTP Keep-Alives, and logging site activity, see the IIS 6.0 online documentation on the Microsoft Windows Server TechCenter.