Hosting ASP.Net Web Sites and SPS Portals on same server

 

In this article, I will demonstrate how to host Microsoft Sharepoint 2003 (SPS) portals and asp.net web sites on same web server without IIS conflicts.

 

Most of SPS developers uses visual studio 2003 for developing Asp.Net Application on the same machine they develop SPS web parts. Unfortunately SPS uses wwwroot to host its portals as physical directory. That results a problem with visual studio 2003 web applications as it uses wwwroot as default physical directory. That happens because SPS uses front page extensions.

 

First after installing sharepoint portal on the server , before you create any portal you will have to do the following steps for every SPS portal

 

1-     you create a physical folder on any partition and make it web shared

Figure 1

Figure 2

Figure 3

 

 

2-     then in IIS Manager you will create a web site for the portal ( because Visual Studio 2003 uses the default web site ). You open IIS Manager from start menu as displayed in figure 4

Figure 4

 

Then you will have IIS manager displays your server name and a tree of Application pools, web sites, web server extensions

 

 

 

 

 

 

Figure 5

 

To create new web site , you right click on web sites and new then web site and the wizard will appear as in figure 6. first step in wizard is welcome so you press next

Figure 6

 

 

In the second step you will write the portal name that appears in IIS

 

 

Figure 7

 

In the third step in wizard ,you will have to change the default port 80 as Visual studio web application already took this port, so we use 8080

 

Figure 8

In the forth step IIS will ask you about the physical path that virtual directory will use , you will browse for the physical folder we have created previously

 

 

Figure 9

 

 

After you choose the physical path , you will have to set the list of access permissions as figure 10

Figure 10

Then, now you finished the wizard of creating a new web site in IIS for sharepoint portal as figure 11

 

 

Figure 11

 

Now , after you finished your business with IIS , it is time to work with Sharepoint central administration to create your portal by the sharepoint. You will find administration for sharepoint from start menu -> administrative tools.

Figure 12

 To create new portal in sharepoint , you visit sharepoint portal server in  sharepoint central  administration. You will see list of functionality related to portals as figure 13

Figure 13

 

To create a new portal, you will have to fill a few information to create it as figure 14

Figure 14

 

As we have  created special web site for out portal , we will not use default web site as it is for ASP.Net Applications , as in figure 14

Figure 14

 

Now you will press next to finalize portal creation process

Figure 15

 

Congratulations you have finished your first sharepoint portal without any conflicts with your asp.net hosted applications

Figure 16