Part 4 - Create a Moodle application in IIS
This part of the IIS configuration varies slightly depending on whether your server is dedicated to your Moodle site or if you are sharing your Moodle site with other web sites.
Note
If you are going to share your Moodle site with other web sites it is important that you put proper change control measures in place to protect your Moodle site, especially if other people are going to be updating sites on the server. This will ensure that other users don't make changes to your Moodle site, or the web server, without your knowledge or permission.
If you are running Moodle on a dedicated server
Do the following if your server is dedicated to Moodle, in other words, if you are not running other web sites in IIS and you want your users to access the Moodle site from the web root e.g. www.yourmoodle.com (instead of www.yourserver.com/moodle).
- Expand the Webs Sites folder in the left pane of the IIS Manager.
- Right-click on the Default Web Site and select Properties.
- Open the Home Directory tab on the Default Web Site Properties dialog box.
- Enter the path to the Moodle folder in the Local path field, e.g. c:\moodle. This will change the Home Directory of the default web site to point to the Moodle folder.
NOTE
The default C:\Inetpub\wwwroot folder will no longer be your web root. If you have any other sites in this folder they will no longer be available! See below for instructions on how to setup your Moodle web site in IIS so that these other web sites will still be available.
- Open the Documents tab on the Default Web Site Properties dialog box.
- Ensure that the Enable default content page checkbox is selected and click the Add button to open the Add Content Page dialog box.
- Enter index.php and click OK. The Moodle index.php file will be added to the list of default content pages.
- There may already be other pages in the Default Content Page list (e.g. Index.htm and Default.aspx). Use the Move up button to move the index.php file to the TOP of the list. IIS looks in the web site folder for all the pages in the order that they appear on this list and you want IIS to run the index.php page in the Moodle folder first, so it must be at the top of the list.
- Click OK to save the changes and close the Default Web Site Properties dialog box.
If you are running Moodle on a shared server
If you are running other sites on the server or you want to access Moodle from a sub-folder on the server (e.g. www.yourmoodle.com/moodle) then you need to create a sub-folder in IIS and point it to the Moodle folder:
- Expand the Web Sites folder in the left pane of the IIS Manager.
- Expand the Default Web Site folder.
- Right-click on the Default Web Site folder and select Virtual Directory from the New submenu item.
- Go through the Virtual Directory Creation Wizard to create the virtual directory.
- Enter the alias for the site e.g. moodle. This will be the name of the sub folder where moodle is installed. The url for your site will be e.g. www.yoursite.com/moodle.
- Enter the path to your Moodle folder on the second screen, e.g. C:\Moodle.
- Give the folder Read permissions on the third screen of the wizard.
- In the left pane of the IIS Manager right-click the Moodle virtual directory that you created in the step above. This will display the Virtual Directory tab of the Properties dialog box of the Moodle virtual directory.
- Click the Create button. This will create a new web application for the Moodle site.
Note
An IIS Application is a virtual directory which contains some or more of the application pool properties. In other words, an IIS Application is basically a logical web-site, isolated from all others. This means that application and session variables are not shared with other IIS applications.
- Click the OK button to close and save the new web application.
The new Moodle web application is now setup and the IIS configuration is complete. The next step is to Configure PHP to work with Microsoft SQL Server 2005.
