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How to Cache Specific Static Files and Directories on IIS

As part of IIS performance tuning to improve a web page load speed, in general you want to enable browser caching by double-clicking on HTTP Response Headers in IIS Manager, click on Set Common Headers and check the Expire Web content:, then set the After: with an x number of days.

Often times though, you may want to be more granular in IIS static content caching for different type of files or all static files under certain folders. In the same way that you can disable browser caching for specific files on IIS, you can also configure the web.config to setup browser caching for specific files or directories with different lengths of time.

<configuration>
...
  <location path="favicon.ico">
    <system.webServer>
      <staticContent>
        <clientCache cacheControlCustom="public" cacheControlMode="UseMaxAge" cacheControlMaxAge="365.00:00:00" />
      </staticContent>
    </system.webServer>
  </location>
  <location path="js">
    <system.webServer>
      <staticContent>
        <clientCache cacheControlCustom="public" cacheControlMode="UseMaxAge" cacheControlMaxAge="60.00:00:00" />
      </staticContent>
    </system.webServer>
  </location>
  <location path="images">
    <system.webServer>
      <staticContent>
        <clientCache cacheControlCustom="public" cacheControlMode="UseMaxAge" cacheControlMaxAge="30.00:00:00" />
      </staticContent>
    </system.webServer>
  </location>
</configuration>

In this example we can see the caching for a specific file favicon.ico is set to 1 year (365 days) and two folders js and images are set to 60 and 30 days respectively (In a format of days.hours:minutes:seconds). This means, all static files under js folder will be cached for 60 days, similarly for images folder, although for less duration since the contents change more frequently.

By caching as many static files as possible on the browser, you can tremendously improve IIS performance, which translates to better users experience in loading your site faster on their subsequent visits.

How to Make Visual Studio Code Colorize Classic ASP Code

If you still have to do development with Classic ASP or VBScript and you want to use Visual Studio Code, you’ll soon find out that even though the code editor was built by Microsoft, there’s no language colorization support for ASP code by default. Fortunately, adding the feature can be done easily using Extensions. So here are the steps to do so:

Launch Visual Studio Code and click on Go and select Go to File… or just press CTRL-P.
On the dialog box, type in the following: ext install classic asp and press [ENTER].
Another way to do it, you can just click on the Extensions icon (it should be the last one on the left-hand side (or press CTRL+SHIFT+X) and type in classic asp in the search box.
Select Classic ASP by Ilya Verbitskiy and click on the Install button as shown below:
Once installed, we still have to associate the asp file extension to the newly ASP colorizer so we don’t have to manually select ASP as the language every time we open an ASP file. As it is now, Visual Studio Code still has no way to detect it as an ASP page so it will treat it as an HTML file.
From the File menu, open Preferences and select Settings (CTRL + ,).
In Search settings box, type in “file associations” and you can either click on the Add Item button and populate the Item and Value (option 1), or you can click on link Edit in settings.json (option 2). In the older version of Visual Studio Code, only option 2 was available, but now if you only have a few entries, option 1 would be easier to do.
If you chose option 1, after adding the items, if you clicked on Edit in settings.json you should see the following:
```
"files.associations": {
  "*.asp": "asp",
  "*.vbs": "asp",  // optional
  "*.inc": "asp"   // optional
}
```
If you chose option 2 though, you have to add those in yourself.
Save the file (CTRL-S) and close it.

That’s all there is to it, now you every time you open an asp file (or vbs script for that matter), the selected Language Mode will be set to ASP and any classic ASP code will be colorized accordingly.

This is not limited to ASP only, you can always look for any language of your choice by going to Visual Studio Marketplace.

Download

Visual Studio Code
Classic ASP (Classic ASP Language Support) – Ilya Verbitskiy

How to Fix Could Not Create a Disk Cache Sub-Directory for the Application Pool on IIS

During one of the upgrade projects from Windows Server 2003 to Windows Server 2008 32-bit, the following error occurs:

Source : Active Server Pages

Error: The Template Persistent Cache initialization failed for Application Pool 'AppPoolName' because of the following error: Could not create a Disk Cache Sub-directory for the Application Pool. The data may have additional error codes..

This happened soon after the Windows Server 2003 was in-place upgraded to Windows Server 2008.

One the problems here is after the upgrade, the default ASP Compiled Templates folder got moved but the application config is still pointing to the old path. The second issue is typically the new folder does not have permissions setup properly.

As a background information, the Application Pool for this classic ASP application is run under .NET Framework v2.0 with Managed Pipeline Mode Classic and Identity set to NetworkService.

So here are the steps to fix the issue.

Give Permissions to ASP Compiled Templates Folder

Open Windows Explorer and go to %SystemDrive%\inetpub\temp and you should see a folder called ASP Compiled Templates.
Right-click on the folder and select Properties and click on the Security tab.
If this is the first time you access it, you may see the prompt as shown below. Just click the Continue button and you’ll see the Advanced Security Settings for ASP Compiled Templates screen.
On the Change owner to: box, select either your group or your NTID and check Replace owner on subcontainers and objects and click OK and Yes when prompted by Windows Security box (All permissions will be replaced if you press Yes).
As instructed, you should close all dialog boxes and go back to the folder’s Properties and click on the Security tab again. This time, you should be able to add a user.
Click on the Add… button and type in Network Service and click OK.
Highlight NETWORK SERVICE and check Full control on the Permissions for NETWORK SERVICE box.
Click OK two times to close all dialog boxes

Now we have set the permission, we also need to modify the value of the new path in applicationHost.config file.

Fix Application Config File

Open Windows Explorer and go to %Windir%\System32\inetsrv\config and look for a file applicationHost.config.
Backup applicationHost.config file.
Open applicationHost.config either using a Notepad or any text editor.
Search for “ASP Compiled Templates” and you should find the diskTEmplateCacheDirectory value for the old path.

Change the old path to the new one. In this example, the new path is %SystemDrive%\inetpub\temp\ASP Compiled Templates.

<cache diskTemplateCacheDirectory="%SystemDrive%\inetpub\temp\ASP Compiled Templates" maxDiskTemplateCacheFiles="2000" scriptFileCacheSize="250" scriptEngineCacheMax="125" enableTypelibCache="true" />

Save the change and close Notepad.

Along with this error, another error HostableWebCore (Event ID 5053) also occurred, but that was easily fixed by following the steps from this Microsoft Technet article.

How to Manage IIS Servers Remotely with WMSVC

One of the better ways of managing IIS is by doing it remotely from your local computer instead of logging in to the server itself. The Web Management Service (WMSVC) in IIS allows a remote connection into a Windows Server 2012 R2 by using the IIS Manager GUI. This is a much lighter connection compared to do an RDP connection to the server.

Here are the steps we need to do before we can use our local IIS Manager to control other remote IIS servers:

Install Management Service Role

Launch IIS Manager and click on Add roles and features.
Click Next > three times until you’re on the section called Server Roles on the left pane.
Go to the right pane called Roles and expand on Web Server (IIS) and Management Tools and check the Management Service.
Click Next > two times until you see the confirmation screen and click on the Install button. You can click on the Close button even before it’s finished the installation. The only downside if you close it early is that there’s no explicit way for you to see if the installation is already completed.

Configure IIS Remote Connection

Still on the server side, launch IIS Manager to configure the Management Service. On the center pane, you should see an icon called Management Service now under the Management area. Double-click on the icon to launch it.
On the Management Service window you can do all other configurations here, but at the very least you need to check the Enable remote connections and click on Apply to save it. Afterwards, click on Start hyperlink to activate it.
For increased security you might want to restrict certain IP addresses allowed to connect remotely by configuring the IP Address Restrictions on the Management Service. But basically, this is all you need to enable the IIS server for a remote management.

Configure Remote IIS Manager

Now we’re done with the server side, we just need to configure the remote desktop (or your local PC) that we want to use to manage the IIS from.

Launch IIS Manager on the remote computer by opening Control Panel, then click on System and Security, Administrative Tools.
On the Connections, you can either do a right-click on the Start Page or on the connection icon and select Connect to a Server.
If you don’t see the Connect to a Server option, then you have to install IIS Remote Administration on your local PC first.
Enter the Server name and click Next.
Type in your NTID credentials and click Next. After a successful confirmation, just click Finish.

That’s all the minimum configurations you need to do to manage IIS servers remotely via Web Management Service (WMSVC).

How to Fix Obsolete ConfigurationSettings.GetConfig API

When you’re upgrading code from .NET Framework 1.1 to 2.0, you will get a few warnings if you use an obsolete API such as ConfigurationSettings.GetConfig, you may see something similar to this:

This method is obsolete, it has been replaced by System.Configuration!System.Configuration.ConfigurationManager.GetSection

To which you have to replace it with ConfigurationManager.GetSection(). Or the same way with ConfigurationSettings.AppSettings.Get() to ConfigurationManager.AppSettings.Get(). The problem is after you made the change, you will encounter another error during compilation such as this:

'ConfigurationManager' is not a member of 'Configuration'.

The solution, while it’s not intuitive is actually very simple. You need to add a reference to System.Configuration.dll to the assembly.

If you’re using a default view, on the right pane of your Visual Studio under your project you can right click on the References and select Add Reference….
Under Assemblies, look for System.Configuration and make sure it’s checked, then click OK.

That’s all there is to it.

How to Cache Specific Static Files and Directories on IIS

Further Reading

How to Make Visual Studio Code Colorize Classic ASP Code

Further Reading

Download

How to Fix Could Not Create a Disk Cache Sub-Directory for the Application Pool on IIS

Give Permissions to ASP Compiled Templates Folder

Fix Application Config File

Further Reading

How to Manage IIS Servers Remotely with WMSVC

Install Management Service Role

Configure IIS Remote Connection

Configure Remote IIS Manager

Further Reading

How to Fix Obsolete ConfigurationSettings.GetConfig API

Further Reading

Recent Posts

Further Reading

Further Reading

Download

Give Permissions to ASP Compiled Templates Folder

Fix Application Config File

Further Reading

Install Management Service Role

Configure IIS Remote Connection

Configure Remote IIS Manager

Further Reading

Further Reading

Recent Posts

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