Have you ever wondered why the box to change the name or “Alias” on an application or virtual directory is greyed out (see screenshot below)? I found a way to change the name without recreating all your settings. It uses the built in administration commands in IIS7, called appcmd.

Renaming Applications In IIS7

1. Open a command prompt to see all of your applications.

   C:> %systemroot%\system32\inetsrv\appcmd list app
   
   APP "Default Web Site/OldApplicationName"
   APP "Default Web Site/AnotherApplication"
   

2. Run a command like this to change your “OldApplicationName” path to “NewApplicationName”. Now you can use http://localhost/newapplicationname

   C:> %systemroot\%system32\inetsrv\appcmd set app "Default Web Site/OldApplicationName" -path:/NewApplicationName;
   
   APP object "Default Web Site/OldApplicationName" changed
   

Renaming Virtual Directories In IIS7

1. Open a command prompt to see all of your virtual directories.

   C:> %systemroot%\system32\inetsrv\appcmd list vdir
   
   VDIR "Default Web Site/OldApplicationName/Images" (physicalPath:\serverimages)
   VDIR "Default Web Site/OldApplicationName/Data/Config" (physicalPath:\serverconfig)
   

   We want to rename /Images to /Images2 and /Data/Config to /Data/Config2. Here are the example commands:

   C:> %systemroot%\system32\inetsrv\appcmd set vdir "Default Web Site/OldApplicationName/Images" -path:/Images2
   
   VDIR object "Default Web Site/OldApplicationName/Images" changed
   
   C:> %systemroot%\system32\inetsrv\appcmd set vdir "Default Web Site/OldApplicationName/Data/Config" -path:/Data/Config2
   
   VDIR object "Default Web Site/OldApplicationName/Data/Config" changed
   

Tags: appcmd, appcmd.exe, application, iis, iis alias, iis manager, iis path, iis rename, iis7, virtual directory

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 2nd, 2010 at 8:17 pm and is filed under ASP.NET, AppCmd, IIS, IIS7, Server Administration. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

« Databinding Nested Repeaters Extended CheckBoxList Control – Return checked items as List/IEnumerable »