How to setup IIS 8 for use with Sitecore under Windows 8

September 28, 2012

Since I moved to greener pastures from beginning of this month and I work for Danish customer, I am learning Sitecore CMS system (which I see they love in DK) and because I tend to work with latest SW, I installed Windows 8 with built in IIS8.

After going through installation guide (you can find it here : http://sdn.sitecore.net/upload/sitecore6/65/installation_guide_sc65-a4.pdf) I installed latest Sitecore and all went well.

I browsed to Sitecore URL and, but it replyed with only plain text, no images, nothing. Why the heck all images and js and other stuff that browser requested have 0b length? All have same property – are static, not processed with ASP.NET pipeline (just server from server). Googling revealed same problem among other people (not connected with Sitecore, they just installed W08 or some other server and they experienced same behaviour) and thing that wasn’t obvious at first: Windows 8 comes with some default configuration, witch IIS8 isn’t part of. So I had to install it (which I did, but I missed some features) going to Control Panel > All Control Panel Items > Programs and Features > Turn Windows features on or off > and then Internet Information Services > World Wide Web Services > Common HTTP Features > Static Content enable serving static content (js, images, etc.).

This should do the trick and your Sitecore should be happily at your service. Enjoy.

Hope this helps.


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Written by Dušan Roštár - the "mr edge case" guy
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