Asp – Is it possible to develop ASP.NET MVC with MS Visual C# 2008 Express Edition and IIS

Classic mode (the only mode in IIS6 and below) is a mode where IIS only works with ISAPI extensions and ISAPI filters directly. In fact, in this mode, ASP.NET is just an ISAPI extension (aspnet_isapi.dll) and an ISAPI filter (aspnet_filter.dll). IIS just treats ASP.NET as an external plugin implemented in ISAPI and works with it like a black box (and only when it's needs to give out the request to ASP.NET). In this mode, ASP.NET is not much different from PHP or other technologies for IIS.

Integrated mode, on the other hand, is a new mode in IIS7 where IIS pipeline is tightly integrated (i.e. is just the same) as ASP.NET request pipeline. ASP.NET can see every request it wants to and manipulate things along the way. ASP.NET is no longer treated as an external plugin. It's completely blended and integrated in IIS. In this mode, ASP.NET HttpModules basically have nearly as much power as an ISAPI filter would have had and ASP.NET HttpHandlers can have nearly equivalent capability as an ISAPI extension could have. In this mode, ASP.NET is basically a part of IIS.

This is what worked for me (Updated for VS 2013, see revision history for 2010, for VS 2015 see this: https://stackoverflow.com/a/32744234/218971):

1. Right-click your Web Application Project ▶ Properties ▶ Web, then configure the Servers section as follows:

   • Select IIS Express ▼ from the drop down
   • Project Url: http://localhost
   • Override application root URL: http://dev.example.com
   • Click Create Virtual Directory (if you get an error here you may need to disable IIS 5/6/7/8, change IIS's Default Site to anything but port :80, make sure Skype isn't using port 80, etc.)

2. Optionally: Set the Start URL to http://dev.example.com

3. Open %USERPROFILE%\My Documents\IISExpress\config\applicationhost.config (Windows XP, Vista, and 7) and edit the site definition in the <sites> config block to be along the lines of the following:

   <site name="DevExample" id="997005936">
       <application path="/" applicationPool="Clr2IntegratedAppPool">
           <virtualDirectory
               path="/"
               physicalPath="C:\path\to\application\root" />
       </application>
       <bindings>
           <binding
               protocol="http"
               bindingInformation=":80:dev.example.com" />
       </bindings>
       <applicationDefaults applicationPool="Clr2IntegratedAppPool" />
   </site>
   

4. If running MVC: make sure the applicationPool is set to one of the "Integrated" options (like "Clr2IntegratedAppPool").

5. Open your hosts file and add the line 127.0.0.1 dev.example.com.

6. ► Start your application!

Some great advice from the comments:

• You may need to run Visual Studio as Administrator.
• If you want to make other devs see your IIS run netsh http add urlacl url=http://dev.example.com:80/ user=everyone
• If you want the site to resolve for all hosts set bindingInformation="*:80:". Use any port you want, 80 is just convenient. To resolve all hosts you'll need to run Visual Studio as an administrator