Have you moved MOSS SharePoint 2007 out of the C:\Inetpub\wwwroot\wss\ folder?

Question

Is it best practice to not use C:\Inetpub\wwwroot\wss\ for SharePoint? My concern is that the configuration wizard seems to look for this C: path and it may be too complicated to not use the default path(s),

Answer 1

We've always let the configuration wizard pick that location for us. There's a lot of aspects of the underlying configuration that rely on that location and it's never seemed worthwhile to explore changing the home directory.

Answer 2

Having failed miserably in the past merely trying to change machine names on a VM after Sharepoint was installed, it is hard to imagine a goal more likely to frustrate than this idea!

Answer 3

What would be the reason for using an alternate location?

Answer 4

The only arguments I've heard for not running IIS websites out of the Inetpub directory is that it's a commonly known location for evildoers to look at when attacking a system, but if security is your concern you're far past screwing the pooch if an attacker has file system access.

Answer 5

You should not be changing anything in the sharepoint IIS sites through IIS Manager, except through the sharepoint Central Admin site. There are dependencies in the sharepoint configuration that are not just stored in IIS, especially around the users that are applied for app pools etc. This website does most of the things you need to do (i.e. host headers etc)

So best practice is to create a folder in the C:\Inetpub\wwwroot\wss\ that is easy to map to the web application and then leave the folder as is.

Although it is hard to find stuff in the Central Admin site, the Infrastructure Update for SharePoint helps.