We were setting up static web site with IIS running at Windows 2003 Server. The site was just plain HTML files with images and CSS so “nothing to break”.
Unfortunatelly always the result was the same:
Service Unavailable
The reason? Simple… at web server ASP.NET applications were configured in application pools. The static site has “Execute permissions: None” which disables the application pool configuration option at web site properties page.
But it does not mean that the application pool is not needed. It is “DefaultAppPool”… and it was disabled (because of being not used).
So… if you see “Service Unavailable” message first check if application pool is started and remember that for non-application web sites it is “DefaultAppPool”.
