Configure IIS to Parse CGI Files

Here’s what you want to do:

• You want your Windows 2000 web server to always execute files with a *.cgi extension.
• You want your Windows 2000 web server to parse the ASP code that you’ve embedded in files that end in *.htm, *.shtml, *.css.
• You want your Windows 2000 web server to know that it needs to parse these file types for all the domains on the machine and you don’t want to modify the settings for each domain.

Here’s how you do it:

1. Open IIS. (Click “Start”, “Administrative Tools”, “Internet Information Services”.)
2. Right-click the web server and select “Properties”. (It should be the first computer in the left-hand pane. It most likely has an asterisk * next to it.)
3. On the “Internet Information Services” tab (the first one you see), click the “Edit …” button next to “WWW Service” in the drop-down combo box titled “Master Properties”.
4. Select the “Home Directory” tab.
5. Click the “Configuration …” button located near the lower right-hand side of the tab.
6. Check to make sure that the extension you are modifying is not already in the list!
7. Click the “Add” button.
8. Use the “Browse …” button to find the path to the executable you want to handle parsing files with the extension you are about to modify. (ex. “C:\WINNT\System38\inetsrv\asp.dll” if you want to parse ASP code in the file; “C:\Perl\Perl.exe %s” if you want to parse the file as if it had a *.pl extension. NOTE: Your paths will be different from mine.)
9. Add the extension you want to modify. (ex. “.css“, “.cgi“)
10. Change the verbs to “GET, POST, HEAD”. (I don’t know why. Just do it. It works.)
11. Click “OK” until you get all the way back to the main screen.
12. You will – most likely – have to restart the IIS service on the machine.