Have you ever wondered why the box to change the name or “Alias” on an application or virtual directory is greyed out (see screenshot below)? I found a way to change the name without recreating all your settings. It uses the built in administration commands in IIS7, called appcmd.

Renaming Applications In IIS7

1. Open a command prompt to see all of your applications.

   1	C:> %systemroot%\system32\inetsrv\appcmd list app

   2

   3	APP "Default Web Site/OldApplicationName"

   4	APP "Default Web Site/AnotherApplication"

2. Run a command like this to change your “OldApplicationName” path to “NewApplicationName”. Now you can use http://localhost/newapplicationname

   1	C:> %systemroot%\system32\inetsrv\appcmd set app "Default Web Site/OldApplicationName" -path:/NewApplicationName

   2

   3	APP object "Default Web Site/OldApplicationName" changed

Renaming Virtual Directories In IIS7

1. Open a command prompt to see all of your virtual directories.

   1	C:> %systemroot%\system32\inetsrv\appcmd list appcmd

   2

   3	VDIR "Default Web Site/OldApplicationName/Images" (physicalPath:\\server\images)

   4	VDIR "Default Web Site/OldApplicationName/Data/Config" (physicalPath:\\server\config)

   We want to rename /Images to /Images2 and /Data/Config to /Data/Config2. Here are the example commands:

   1	C:> %systemroot%\system32\inetsrv\appcmd set vdir "Default Web Site/OldApplicationName/Images" -path:/Images2

   2

   3	VDIR object "Default Web Site/OldApplicationName/Images" changed

   4

   5	C:> %systemroot%\system32\inetsrv\appcmd set vdir "Default Web Site/OldApplicationName/Data/Config" -path:/Data/Config2

   6

   7	VDIR object "Default Web Site/OldApplicationName/Data/Config" changed