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Today I start setting up a new web server for our small, non-profit. Because none of us are sys admins, we're be doing basically what the previous person did, when he set it up on the old server years ago. We have public facing website for our non-profit, what I like to call "brochureware". It describes who we are, where we're located, etc. The previous guy placed this all in wwwroot. Not a folder within wwwroot, just wwwroot. I've always felt that was probably wrong, but I didn't know any better, and I certainly wasn't in charge of it back then. Now that it falls on me, I don't know what I'm supposed to do, so I'd appreciate some help on this, please.

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I recommend you to set up a test system and gain some experiences. It can be a copy of your production system. Use that system to evaluate changes. If they break something, repair it or reinstall it. If everything works, apply it to the production system.

And very important: Read the documentation of the systems you're working with. Try to understand why your successor did what he did. It's not that hard to run a small web server, there's lots of help out there. If you have more precise questions, come back here and we'll help you. But "How do you set up a public website on a Windows server?" question is very broad question.

As for wwwroot: What server are you using? IIS? Why do you think it's bad to put the whole page directly into wwwroot?

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    The Default Web Site that gets created when IIS is installed lives in C:\Inetpub\wwwroot by default. So yes, it'll be IIS. Apr 25, 2012 at 12:28
  • @ChrisMcKeown: That'd be my guess. Yet depending on how the server is configured it could also be an Apache directory, even if the chances are slim. But you never know until you ask. ;)
    – Skalli
    Apr 25, 2012 at 12:31
  • True enough, fair point! Apr 25, 2012 at 12:41
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    @Rod: If you have enough place on partition two. Maybe you can take some free disk space and move it to partition one. The disk manager of windows is able of doing that during run time. (Make partition two smaller and add the free disk space to partition one.) Oh, and yes, there should be a 1-to-1 relationship between websites and sub-folders. But most webserver, I assume IIS too, can also add folders in other directories to the webserver. I use this in Apache to put a huge folder on the web, which doesn't fit on Apaches partition.
    – Skalli
    Apr 25, 2012 at 14:29
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    @Rod: As I said, I'm not experienced with IIS, but yes, the default website SHOULD be able to be anything. Also, if you have trouble with disk space, you should be able to specify the location of wwwroot in the IIS settings. Look it up on google, looks like there's plenty of useful input out there. (Did you mean me with Chris? ;) )
    – Skalli
    Apr 25, 2012 at 14:49
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If your server is already running as it should be, I suggest you don't change anything in it.

Otherwise, you may need to hire a Windows admin. You have to be careful before changing anything on production servers especially if you don't have the required experience.

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