Microsoft® IIS 6.0 Administrator's Pocket Consultant

Customizing Web Site Content and HTTP Headers

IIS sets default values for documents and Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) headers. You can modify these default values at the site, directory, and file level.

Configuring Default Documents

Default document settings determine how IIS handles requests that don’t specify a document name. If a user makes a request using a directory path that ends in a directory name or forward slash (/) rather than a file name, IIS uses the default document settings to determine how to handle the request.

When default document handling is enabled, IIS searches for default documents in the order in which their names appear in the default document list and returns the first document it finds. If a match isn’t found, IIS ...