Personal Webserver

Personal Webserver makes your PC act as an intranet server

within a small workgroup. It’s not for the Internet or for large networks, and helps

you handle HTML documents, and transfer files within a limited number of users (ideally 10

to 15). It’s a scaled down Internet Information Server (IIS) that comes as a part of

the OSR2 version of Win 95, and 98, and can also be used to test Web pages before you

upload them to a live site. It acts as a proxy server that gives you the feel of the real

Internet environment. If you are using a previous version of Win 95, you can download the

Personal Webserver files from www.microsoft.com/ie/download/ieadd.htm.

The installation is fairly easy. For Win 95 OSR2 users,

right click Network Neighborhood and go to Properties>

Configuration>Add>Service>Add> Microsoft>Personal Webserver and click on

OK. Win 95 will ask you to restart the machine. The other method of installation is even

easier. Download the PWS10A.EXE file from the Internet site mentioned earlier. Double

click the file icon. The program will copy some files and will ask you to restart your

machine. On restarting, the Personal Webserver icon will appear on the system tray in the

taskbar. Win 98 users can install the Server from Programs>Internet

Explorer>Personal Web Server.

Its default configuration is more than sufficient to get

you started. To test your setup, open any browser. Type http:// machine>, (the name of your machine can be found from Network

Neighborhood>Properties> Identification). A default screen called "Your Home

Page Goes Here" will appear.

Personal Webserver has an FTP server that is off by

default. To turn it on, right click its icon in the system tray and select

Properties>Services>Start. Now, type ftp:// in the

browser. A default page (giving the current directory) will be displayed, indicating the

successful installation of FTP services.

Now that your system is ready, you can use the Personal

Webserver for hosting your pages so that they are available to all those who are on the

intranet. Save these pages in your system and remember the path. Now right click the Web-

server icon and select Administer. This will open a page called Internet Services

Administrator that has three main options: WWW administration, FTP administration and

Local user administration.

For handling HTML documents, click on WWW administration.

Click on the Directories tab in the new page that pops up. The first path under the

Directory head refers to the first page that will be displayed when anyone accesses your

site. You can edit this and set the path to the page you have created.

To start using FTP services, you again need to go to the

Internet Services Administrator page and select the WWW Administration option. Configure

it in the same way as the WWW Administration and your files are ready for FTP.

Like other features, setting access rights on Personal

Webserver is also an easy task. In the Internet Services Administrator page select the

option Local User Administration. The page that opens will guide you to install security

for the first time. Once this is done, all you need to do is add new users and give them

passwords, by selecting the Users tab from the same page.

The Win 98 version of Personal Webserver has extra features

like a wizard to create your Web page, a wizard to publish Web pages, and an introductory

tour of Personal Webserver.