Iis – Why isn’t IIS serving the static CSS / JS files

The problem was permissions. Even though when I create the IIS7 web site I told it to access the files as my user (it wouldn't work at all otherwise), for static file it was using the user of the application pool. Giving access to IIS APPPOOL\MyApplication to the folder where my project was fixed the issue.

From my experience with ASP.NET MVC, I've seen that a Default.aspx page is required for IIS to function correctly. I'm using the page that was included in the ASP.NET MVC 1 template. Unfortunately, the ASP.NET MVC 2 does not include this page (to the best of my knowledge), so you should add the following to your project:

Default.aspx:

<%@ Page Language="C#" AutoEventWireup="true" CodeBehind="Default.aspx.cs" Inherits="YourNamespace._Default" %>

<%-- Please do not delete this file. It is used to ensure that ASP.NET MVC is activated by IIS when a user makes a "/" request to the server. --%>

Default.aspx.cs:

using System.Web;
using System.Web.Mvc;
using System.Web.UI;

namespace YourNamespace
{
    public partial class _Default : Page
    {
        public void Page_Load(object sender, System.EventArgs e)
        {
            // Change the current path so that the Routing handler can correctly interpret
            // the request, then restore the original path so that the OutputCache module
            // can correctly process the response (if caching is enabled).

            string originalPath = Request.Path;
            HttpContext.Current.RewritePath(Request.ApplicationPath, false);
            IHttpHandler httpHandler = new MvcHttpHandler();
            httpHandler.ProcessRequest(HttpContext.Current);
            HttpContext.Current.RewritePath(originalPath, false);
        }
    }
}