Sharing files for Related Links with Web Sharing on Windows Server 2003

In Connections Online, we have a feature called Related Links where we allow you to link to files that that are related to the information stored in our application. These links can be to files out on the Internet or to files shared on your local network.

In the past, these related links were mostly used for files shared on local networks. They would link to files with locations that looked like M:\Shared\file.doc or \\servername\share\file.doc. These links made it easy for users to point to files that were already shared on their internal networks even when those files were not normally opened from Web browsers.

In the last few years, however, the Web browsers have realized that allowing links to local network files is a security risk, and they have gradually removed the ability to use those types of links in favor of using Web-safe links only. Some examples of Web-safe links are http://servername/share/file.doc, https://servername/share/file.doc, and ftp://servername/share/file.doc. Even if your current browser still allows the old links, it is a good idea to go ahead and update all of your links to use the newer, safer format.

For internal file servers that are running Windows Server 2003 and sharing files with the \\servername\share or mapped network drive format, this is an easy update and does not require that the files are moved or that the current network shares are removed. I'm going to use Windows Server 2003 in this article, but the steps are very similar in Windows Server 2000, Windows Server 2008, and even in Windows XP Professional.

First off, make sure that Internet Information Services (IIS) is installed on the server. It is a Windows Component that is included with Windows Server 2003 but may not have been installed. If it is not installed, you can install it by going to Control Panel, Add or Remove Programs, Add/Remove Windows Components. In the Components list, select Application Server, then select Internet Information Services (IIS), and finally World Wide Web Service. Press OK to close all of the option windows and continue with the installation. You may need to have your original Windows Server 2003 installation media to complete the installation.

Once it is installed and running, you should be able to get to a welcome page by going to http://servername in a Web browser. If it isn't working, check Microsoft's site for more help.

Now, you're ready to share your files with web folders. In Windows Explorer, browse to the location where your files are located.

Right-click on the folder you wish to share and click Properties or Sharing and Security... from the menu. Both options open up the properties window.

In the properties window, select the Web Sharing tab, and click on the Share this folder option. On this window, you could also choose to share your files in a location other that the Default Web Site on your server, but to keep it simple, I'm just going to use the default option.

Choose an alias for the folder to be used on the Web share. You can just use the default alias which matches the directory name on the server, but if the directory name has spaces or other non-alpha-numeric characters in it (or if it is a long name) you may want to use a shorter alias. Later on, this alias will be part of the file location: http://servername/alias/file.doc.

In the Access permissions section, only the Read option is required for the Related Links to work, but the Directory browsing option makes using the shared folder a bit easier, and the Write option allows the files to be updated through WebDAV connections to the folder. I'm going to use the directory browsing option later in this example, so if you're following along, you may want to do the same.

When you close the Alias window, the new alias will show up in the Properties window. Press OK a couple of times and close all of the open dialog windows.

Now, you can check your IIS settings to see that the new web folder is being shared. Open the Internet Information Services (IIS) Manager in Administrative Tools. Administrative Tools may not show up on your Start Menu in the same spot it does for me, but it should be in there somewhere.

In the IIS Manager, expand the tree on the left side so you can see the Web Sites on your server. Under the Default Web Site, you should see a folder or cog icon that matches the alias you set for the shared folder. Select that alias and the shared files and sub-folders should show up in the right side of the window.

If everything is showing up in IIS Manager, it's time to try to open the links in Internet Explorer. Open Internet Explorer and type in the link http://servername/alias where servername is the machine name (mine was COL3) and alias is your web folder name (mine was article). Since we enabled directory browsing, this link opens up a directory view of the files available.

Right-click on one of the file links and choose Properties. This will show you the new Web address (URL) for the file. In my example, the link is http://col3/article/btaxonomy.pdf. You now have the new link that you can use in Connections Online.

That's it! Once you begin using these new links, they should become more and more familiar and easy to use, your Connections Online site will be more secure, and you will no longer have to worry about supporting the older link formats or older, less secure Web browsers.