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Asked: 2026-05-13T11:06:23+00:00

I have uploaded a simple hello world on my IIS server 7 (shared hosting).

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I have uploaded a simple hello world on my IIS server 7 (shared hosting). It doesn’t work. Is it necessary to add a web config and what’s the minimum in that case ?

Thanks.

Error says:

Server Application Unavailable

The web application you are attempting
to access on this web server is
currently unavailable. Please hit the
“Refresh” button in your web browser
to retry your request.

Here’s the script, very basic 🙂

<%@ Page Language="VB" %>

<html>
<head>
<title>ASP.NET Hello World</title>
</head>
<body bgcolor="#FFFFFF">

<p><%= "Hello World!" %></p>

</body>
</html>
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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    A individual, site-specific web.config is not required to be present in order to get a basic “Hello World” site up and running in IIS7, however, it’s rather unusual not to have one.

    IIS7, unlike previous versions, effectively has the ASP.NET worker process component “built-in”. This allows web.config files to specify configuration of not only your ASP.NET site itself, but also how the IIS server hosting your site should be configured (i.e. you can specify (for example) the default document type in an ASP.NET web.config file).

    If you don’t specify an individual web.config for your ASP.NET site, the IIS7 server will use the “default” web.config, which is usually located in your “windows” folder within the system-wide configuration of the .NET framework itself.

    This article:

    Working With Configuration Files in IIS 7

    from the MSDN library states:

    Configuration Files

    Configuration exists in a physical
    directory in either server-level
    configuration files or in Web.config
    files. Every configuration file maps
    to a specific site, application, or
    virtual directory.

    Server-level configuration is stored
    in the following configuration files:

    • Machine.config. This file is located in
      %windir%\Microsoft.NET\Framework\framework_version\CONFIG.

    • Root Web.config for the .NET Framework. This file is located in
      %windir%\Microsoft.NET\Framework\framework_version\CONFIG.

    • ApplicationHost.config. This file is located in
      %windir%\system32\inetsrv\config.

    Site, application, and virtual and
    physical directory configuration can
    be stored in one of the following
    locations:

    • A server-level configuration file. When configuration for a site,
      application, directory, or URL is
      stored in a server-level configuration
      file, you must use a location tag to
      specify the site, application,
      directory, or URL to which the
      configuration applies.

    • A parent-level Web.config file. When configuration for an application,
      directory, or URL is stored in a
      parent-level configuration file, you
      must use a location tag to specify the
      child at which the configuration
      applies.

    • The Web.config file for the site, the application, or the directory.
      When you configure settings for an
      application, directory, or URL, the
      configuration is stored in the same
      directory as the site, application, or
      directory. You do not need to use
      location tags.

    Storing configuration settings in a
    parent configuration file is helpful
    when:

    • You want to store configuration settings in a configuration file that
      is accessible by only certain users or
      groups. For example, the
      ApplicationHost.config file is
      available only to the Administrator
      account and to the members of the
      Administrators group on a specific
      computer, as well as to domain
      administrators when a computer is part
      of a domain.

    • You want to configure a feature at the URL-level (also known as
      file-level).

    Also, see the following article for further information:

    The new Configuration System in IIS 7

    EDIT:

    Regarding the specific error message that you’re getting, I’ve seen this before on an IIS7 server, and the problem turned out to be the Application Pool that the site was set to use wasn’t “running”. Going into the IIS7 admin gui and starting the Application Pool cured the problem.

    I have also seen this error caused wen the relevant permissions have not been set on the folder containing your website code.

    See here, here, and here for further information.

    Of course, since you’re testing a shared hosting environment, you probably don’t have access to the web server itself, and it’s difficult to know exactly what you do have access to, administration-wise, through your hosting provider, but they probably have some kind of interface to set permissions on folders/files, so I’d look there first.
    Failing that, you may have to include a web.config file in your “test” site as that will allow you to set configurations within IIS7 that you may otherwise have no access to.

    Failing that, you may need to speak to your web host’s support team.

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