Change Default IIS Page

If you’re using a windows small business server for email (Exchange, probably), you’ve noticed that the default page is pretty boring (see above).  Here’s how to change that. 

First off, go ahead and create a single HTML page (no server side stuff).  Try not to include any files from sources that don’t have an SSL avaliable (e.g. https).

Got that page looking pretty?  Great.

Now, go to your server and look on the main volume (C:\) for a folder called Inetpub.  Inside of that folder should be another one called, wwwroot.  Inside of that last folder is a file called iisstart.htm.  Make of copy of that file somewhere as a backup and then rename your new page iisstart.htm and copy & replace it into that folder.

That’s it.  If you go to your email domain, you’ll now see your (much prettier) IIS start page.

Our Example

Purely as an example, JDM’s main domain name is jdmdigital.co, but our email domain name is jdmemail.com.  So, when people would copy the email domain name into their browser, they’d see that ugly IIS page.

Now, they see this: jdmemail.com which offers both links to our corporate site and remote access links for internal staff.