On Windows XP Professional you can only have one web site, the UI will not let you create more than one, but you can actually create more by working with the IIS Metabase.
You can only have one of these web sites active at a time and there are other limitations when using Windows XP such as:
| Windows XP Professional |
Windows 2000 and 2003 Server |
| 10 Simultaneous Connections |
Unlimited number of connections |
| 1 Virtual Web Site |
Unlimited number of Virtual Web Sites |
| Does not support Host Headers (See below for a solution) |
Full support for Host Headers (WWW Service) |
| Does not support ODBC logging |
Full support for ODBC logging |
| Does not support IP and DNS Restrictions |
Full support for IP and DNS Restrictions |
IIS Admin is a small free tool that will allow you to have multiple web sites under Windows XP Professional and simply select which site is the active site. The same limitation of one web site being active is still enforced by IIS but you do get a nice simple way of selecting which site is active.
The utility runs from the System Tray and you add new sites from the simple UI as well.
For more details see - http://www.firstserved.net/services/iisadmin.php
For those time when you really need multiple sites on a non Server product checkout MultiSite Filter Version 2
On Windows 2000 and XP Professional this ISAPI filter will allow you to run multiple sites by interrogating the host header of the incoming http request and on the outcome of that redirects the request to the relevant place in the filesystem.
For more details see - http://www.hairy-spider.com/multisite.aspx