IIS Express and URL Reservations

I recently had a need to open up the IIS Express on my local computer so that I could have a custom domain pointed to it for some testing of cookie writing.

After scouring the web for documentation, I was able to get what I needed from an article that Scott Hanselman published on Working with SSL at Development Time is easier with IISExpress.

Here is the command to add a URL Reservation:

netsh http add urlacl url=http://www.yourdomain.com:80/ user=everyone

This will add www.yourdomain.com on port 80 to your access list therefore allowing communication to IIS Express externally.  There is additional instructions to open up Windows Firewall if you want to allow access to the site to users elsewhere on your network or publically.

If you would like to see a list of URL’s that already configured:

netsh http show urlacl

To remove the URL Reservation:

netsh http delete urlacl http://www.yourdomain.com:80/