Installing and/or configuring a production-ready web server, such as Internet Information Services (IIS) or Apache, can be a very complex task depending on a number of things that we can't address now, as they will easily bring us far beyond the scope of this book.

To keep things simple, we'll just assume that we already have access to an up and running, physical or virtualized Windows Server machine featuring a running IIS instance (we'll call it as web server from now on) that we can configure to suit our needs. Ideally, we'll be able to do that via a dedicated management interface such as Remote Desktop, IIS Remote Configuration, Plesk, or any other remote administration mechanism made available by our web farm and/or service provider.

Last but not least, we'll also assume that our web server provides FTP-based access to the /inetpub/ folder that we can use to publish our web projects. If we're facing a different scenario, it can be advisable to skip this chapter entirely and follow the instructions given by our chosen web hosting provider instead.