IIS Rewrite Product Usage The following scenarios outline some of the practical applications of this product. For sample configuration files to the usage examples below, see the product documentation. • ASP based downloads, downloads from a database Web sites that have hundreds or even thousands of files for download often find it simpler to store the files in a database instead of in the document root of the webserver. With the use of ASP, it is simple to serve these files using readily available file download components. The URLs for such download requests typically look something like this: http://www.somesite.com/getfile.asp?FileID=1007 These types of URLs create various problems with some proxy servers and browsers. Many proxy servers will refuse to cache a file with a query string (those items after the '?') in the URL. Further, many browsers with download managers will often save the file as the name of the ASP page (e.g. getfile.asp) instead of the file name that was sent in the MIME headers. IIS Rewrite allows you to construct such links to look like static links, such as: http://www.somesite.com/getfile/1007/setup.exe ...and then rewite the URL before it is handed to the ASP script to: http://www.somesite.com/getfile.asp?FileID=1007 • Make dynamic sites indexable by search engines Many search engines refuse to index pages that contain query strings (those items after the '?') in the URL as this is generally a sign of dynamic content. With IISRewrite a link such as: http://www.somesite.com/product.asp?ProductID=798 ...can be changed to: http://www.somesite.com/product/798/index.htm Requests to the URL with the 'static' look will be automatically rewritten and handed to the webserver as they were originally designed, allowing the use of query strings, but also creating an search-engine friendly website. Check out this customer's experience: When reviewcentre.com started using static URLs, our traffic jumped from 2,000 to 20,000 visitors/month overnight and is now over 120,000 visitors/month. Making product pages spiderable means higher ranking for the home page too. I speak from experience, that this has far more traffic pulling potential than meta keywords and all that tosh. I am amazed that many so-called search engine guru's have never heard of it. • Security screen Most who have worked with Microsoft's IIS server is likely aware of the many possible "show code" vunaribilities. For example, a stock installation of IIS 4 it is possible to veiw the entire contents of the global.asa file with its accompanying passwords through the following URL: http://www.somesite.com/global.asa+.htr There are patches are workarounds available to solve such problems, but with IISRewrite it is simple to create a trap for those who are probing your webserver. Simply configure a rule to rewrite any requests to the global.asa file to a trap file that displays a fake global.asa file and sends an email alert to the system administrator. • Protect files on a site A site that offers things for free download such as software, graphics, and other files is often dependant on advertising revenue to support the traffic. It is not uncommon for other sites to link directly to these files from their own pages, which allows users to bypass the pages with the advertising. IISRewrite allows you to detect the HTTP Referrer property, and effectively redirect the user to a different location. For complete product information please view the product's documentation.