Tip: To have Personal Web Server start automatically when you restart your computer, select the check box labeled Run The Web Server Automatically At Startup.

After you have started your server, it is a good idea to test it by using your browser to view the files in your home directory.

To test a server connected to the Internet:

1. Start your browser on a computer that has an active connection to the Internet.

Note: If the computer does not have a direct Internet connection, you must connect to your Internet service provider (ISP) by using Dial-Up Networking. For more information, see Windows Help. It is recommended that you use a different computer, if one is available, from the server you are testing.

1. Type the address for the home directory of your new server. The address will be http:// followed by the name of your server and the path of the file you want to view. (Note the forward slashes.) For example, if your server is registered in the Domain Name System (DNS) as www.company.com and you want to view the file Homepage.htm in the root of the home directory, you would type:

   http://www.company.com/homepage.htm

   Then press ENTER. The page should appear on the screen.

Note: If you do not know the name of your computer, double-click the Network icon in Control Panel, and click the Identification tab.

To test a server on your intranet

1. Make sure your computer has an active network connection. To do this, double-click the Network Neighborhood icon, and then make sure you can see other computers in the same workgroup.
2. Make sure that the WINS server service (or other name-resolution method) is functioning. To do this, at a different computer on the network, click Start, point to Find, and click Computer. Type the name of the computer running Personal Web Server, and then click Find. The computer should appear in the list.
3. Start Microsoft Internet Explorer.
4. Type the address for the home directory of your new server. The address will be http:// followed by the Windows Networking name of your server and the path of the file you want to view. For example, if your server is registered with the WINS server as Admin1 and you want to view the file Homepage.htm in the root of the home directory, you would type:

   http://admin1/homepage.htm

5. Then press ENTER. The page should appear on the screen.

Tip: If the page does not appear on the screen, go back to the server. On the server, click Start, click Run, and then type Winipcfg

6. Write down the Internet Protocol (IP) address that Winipcfg.exe reports, and then test the connection by using the IP address instead of the computer name. For example, if the IP address for Admin1 in the previous example is 123.45.6.78, you would type:

http://123.45.6.78/homepage.htm

7. Then press ENTER. The page should appear on the screen.

Personal Web Server Administration

Restricting Access to your site

You can use Internet Services Administrator, which comes with Personal Web Server, to restrict access to your Web site by restricting access to individual users or groups, and specifying password encryption methods for your Web site.

Requiring Passwords

You can also require users to supply a valid Windows NT user name and password. You can have the password sent by using either basic authentication or Windows NT Challenge/Response Authentication

With both basic authentication and Windows NT authentication, no access is permitted to secure folders unless a valid user name and password is supplied. Password authentication is useful if you want only authorized individuals to use your server. You can have both anonymous access and authenticated access enabled at the same time.

Note: Windows NT Challenge/Response authentication does not work with local security.

Basic Authentication

Basic authentication does not encrypt your user name and password before transmission. Basic authentication is encoded only by using base64 encoding, and can be decoded easily by anyone with access to your network or to a segment of the Internet that transfers your packets.

Caution: By using basic authentication, you send your Windows NT user names and passwords unencrypted over public networks. Intruders could easily learn your user names and passwords.

Windows NT Challenge/Response authentication

The WWW service also supports the Windows NT Challenge/Response encrypted-password transmission.

Windows NT Challenge/Response authentication encrypts the user name and password, providing secure transmission of user names and passwords over the Internet. It is currently supported only by Microsoft Internet Explorer version 3.0 or later for Windows 95.

Note: Windows NT Challenge/Response authentication only works over a local area network that has at least one Windows NT domain.

Choose Difficult Passwords

The easiest way for someone to gain unauthorized access to your system is with a stolen or easily guessed password. Make sure that all passwords used on the system, especially those with administrative rights, have difficult-to-guess passwords.

Limit the Membership of the Administrator Group

By limiting the members of the Administrator group, you limit the number of users who might choose bad passwords and expose your system.

User Lists

If your computer is not set up to use user-level access control, you can control access to your Web site by creating a user list on your computer.

To add users to a user list

1. In Control Panel, double-click the Personal Web Server icon.
2. On the Administration tab, click Administration.
3. On the Internet Services Administrator page, click Local User Administration.
4. To add users to the user list, click New User.
5. Type a user name.

Note: When you add users to your user list, you must supply a password for each one. Personal Web Server does not support null passwords at this time. You can also create groups of users.

To create a group of users

1. In Control Panel, double-click the Personal Web Server icon.
2. On the Administration tab, click Administration.
3. On the Internet Services Administrator page, click Local User Administration.
4. On the Groups tab, click New Group, and then type the name of the group.

To add users to a group

1. On the Local User Administration page, click the User/Group tab.
2. Click a name in the list of users, click a name in the list of groups, and then click Add User To Group.

Note: If your computer is set up to use user-level or share-level security, you cannot use a user list to restrict access to your Web page. You can also restrict access to your Personal Web Server folders on a per-folder basis. You can set a folder to be read-only, or allow users to run scripts in that folder, or both.

To restrict access to a folder

1. In My Computer, right-click the folder you want to restrict access to, and then click Sharing.
2. Click Shared As, and then click Web Sharing.
3. Select the Share Folder For HTTP check box. To make the folder read-only, click Read-Only. To allow users to run scripts from pages located in that folder, click Execute Scripts.

Configuring logging for your site

You can track access to your Web site by using log files.

To enable logging

1. In Control Panel, double-click the Personal Web Server icon.
2. On the Administration tab, click Administration.
3. On the Internet Services Administrator page, click WWW Administration.
4. On the WWW Administration page, click the Logging tab.
5. Select the Enable Logging check box, and make the changes you want.

The log file is named Inetserver_event.log. If you do not specify a log file directory on the Logging tab, the file is stored in your Windows folder. It's best to open the file in Word 'cause if you use Notepad, you'll have a heck of a time reading your log file.

FTP Server Administration

In addition to the World Wide Web service, Microsoft Personal Web Server includes File Transfer Protocol (FTP).

To create an FTP site on your computer

1. In Control Panel, double-click the Personal Web Server icon.
2. Click the Services tab.
3. On the Services property sheet, select FTP, and then click Start.

By default, your home directory is C:\WebShare\Ftproot. You can, however, set a different directory to be the FTP home directory.

To set a different directory to be the home directory

1. In Control Panel, double-click the Personal Web Server icon.
2. On the Administration tab, click Administration.
3. On the Internet Services Administrator page, click FTP Administration.
4. On the Directories tab, click Add.
5. Type the path of a directory on your computer, or click Browse to search for the directory.
6. Click Home Directory.
7. To give people write access to the directory, in the Access box, select the Write check box.-or-To give people read-only access to the directory, select the Read check box.

After you have set up your home directory, you can configure it.

To configure your home directory

1. In Control Panel, double-click the Personal Web Server icon.
2. On the Administration tab, click Administration.
3. On the Internet Services Administrator page, click FTP Administration.
4. On the FTP Administration page, click the Service tab, and then make the changes you want.

Traditionally, anonymous FTP users log on by using their e-mail addresses as passwords. Note that Internet Explorer automatically logs on anonymously to all FTP servers that permit anonymous logon. If you want to prevent people from using user names, select the Allow Only Anonymous Connections check box.

When Allow Only Anonymous Connections is selected, no account other than "anonymous" can log on. This is useful for security because intruders cannot attempt to gain access with the administrator account.

To get information about all the current connections to your FTP site

1. In Control Panel, double-click the Personal Web Server icon.
2. On the Administration tab, click Administration.
3. On the Internet Services Administrator page, click FTP Administration.
4. On the FTP Administration page, click the Services tab, and then click Show Current Sessions.

Restricting access to your FTP site

If you do not have File and Print Sharing enabled, the FTP Service uses the Local User Administration to create users, groups, and passwords for users and groups.