Shortcut to open IIS 7 Manager so it Shows “Sites” view (status) by Default

batch-fileiis-7shortcutwindows-server-2008windows-server-2008-r2

I would like to quickly be able to check whether a site is online after logging into the desktop of Windows Server 2008 R2 (x64). I would prefer to be able to do this in just 1 single or double-click (or better yet, without clicking at all) than to have to navigate the tree structure of the IIS Manager.

I can make a shortcut to IIS Manager and put it on my desktop, but how do I force it to open to the SERVERNAME/Sites view rather than clicking several times to get there?

If it can't be done, is there some other way without doing programming that I can put an "online/offline" indicator (preferably in the system tray or on the desktop) for each site I want to put there?

If I have to resort to programming for this seemingly simple feature, how can I get the status (started or stopped) for a specific IIS web site to be shown in my custom program? What API, file, or registry entry do I need to read to get this status info?

Update

I discovered someone else with a .bat file that used the appcmd.exe IIS utility. After some trial and error after reading the MSDN documents about the appcmd.exe utility, I was able to piece together the following .bat file that does the job nicely. The task at hand was simply to get a site (or multiple site's) state in 2 clicks or less from the desktop.

@echo off

:Status
Set STATUS1=MAINTENANCE
FOR /F "tokens=*" %%A IN ('%SystemRoot%\System32\inetsrv\appcmd list site /site.name:www.mysite1.com /text:state ^| FIND "Started"') DO SET STATUS1=STARTED

Set STATUS2=MAINTENANCE
FOR /F "tokens=*" %%A IN ('%SystemRoot%\System32\inetsrv\appcmd list site /site.name:www.mysite2.com /text:state ^| FIND "Started"') DO SET STATUS2=STARTED

echo www.mysite1.com: %STATUS1%
echo www.mysite2.com: %STATUS2%

pause

Unfortunately, the utility is not documented very well – I had to tinker with it quite a bit to get the result I wanted. 

%SystemRoot%\System32\inetsrv\appcmd list site /site.name:www.mysite1.com

This is the line that gets the status, but running it like this returns a bunch of other stuff too. So, in order to just get the status and nothing else, another parameter must be added.

%SystemRoot%\System32\inetsrv\appcmd list site /site.name:www.mysite1.com /text:state

Following the example in the link, I was also able to put together a menu to instantly start and stop the sites by pressing a key and then ENTER, and then it displays the status of the sites again – all from one .bat file.

Best Answer

If you have the 'IIS Management Scripts and Tools' enabled, you can use PowerShell to show the status of the sites. I use a script like this in a dedicated PowerShell window:

do
{
     clear-host
     Get-ChildItem IIS:\sites | format-table state, name
     $curPos = $Host.UI.RawUI.CursorPosition
     $ou = (Get-Date).ToString("HH:mm:ss")
     $ou = "  " +  $ou + " - Press CRTL+C to terminate"
     $Host.UI.Write($ou)
     $Host.UI.RawUI.CursorPosition=$curPos 
     Start-Sleep -Seconds 5
} until ($false)

The line

Get-ChildItem IIS:\sites | format-table state

does the real work, the rest is just there to keep the output from scrolling. It updates every five seconds.

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