Have you ever wondered why the box to change the name or “Alias” on an application or virtual directory is greyed out (see screenshot below)? I found a way to change the name without recreating all your settings. It uses the built in administration commands in IIS7, called appcmd.
Renaming Applications In IIS7
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Open a command prompt to see all of your applications.
C:> %systemroot%\system32\inetsrv\appcmd list app APP "Default Web Site/OldApplicationName" APP "Default Web Site/AnotherApplication"
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Run a command like this to change your “OldApplicationName” path to “NewApplicationName”. Now you can use http://localhost/newapplicationname
C:> %systemroot%\system32\inetsrv\appcmd set app "Default Web Site/OldApplicationName" -path:/NewApplicationName APP object "Default Web Site/OldApplicationName" changed
Renaming Virtual Directories In IIS7
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Open a command prompt to see all of your virtual directories.
C:> %systemroot%\system32\inetsrv\appcmd list appcmd VDIR "Default Web Site/OldApplicationName/Images" (physicalPath:\\server\images) VDIR "Default Web Site/OldApplicationName/Data/Config" (physicalPath:\\server\config)
We want to rename /Images to /Images2 and /Data/Config to /Data/Config2. Here are the example commands:
C:> %systemroot%\system32\inetsrv\appcmd set vdir "Default Web Site/OldApplicationName/Images" -path:/Images2 VDIR object "Default Web Site/OldApplicationName/Images" changed C:> %systemroot%\system32\inetsrv\appcmd set vdir "Default Web Site/OldApplicationName/Data/Config" -path:/Data/Config2 VDIR object "Default Web Site/OldApplicationName/Data/Config" changed