Sitefinity Users Beware!

Okay so this is for anyone out there who plans on or is trying to run Telerik's Sitefinity <= 3.7 on IIS 7.0. If you haven't had much opportunity to read up on or play with IIS 7.0, then you may find this helpful. IIS 7.0 has changed the way that it processes IIS and ASP.NET reqests. In the past it would use separate pipelines for the 2 different types of requests, but now they are integrated into the same pipeline, which can allow for some powerful things to happen for applications that are written to take advantage of it. However for those applications that are not written to take advantage of it, frustration and confusion can ensue. This is where Sitefinity comes in...

Based on my own personal experience, if you are not careful IIS 7.0 will be set up with the DefaultAppPool, which uses the integrated request pipeline. Sitefinity will install and work, kinda, but you will get wierd 404 errors, which will drive you bonkers. Fortunately, there is a way around this by implementing an application pool that uses the classic request pipeline. If you make sure to install IIS 7.0 with IIS Metabase and IIS 6 configuration compatibility, there will be a 2nd application pool titled Classic .NET AppPool, which uses the classic request pipeline.

Simply switching the application to use this app pool will clear up a lot of gray and allow you to steer around any other issues you may have (most likely dealing with authentication). One other thing you may want to ensure is that the Classic .NET AppPool runs under the LocalSystem account. I believe that Telerik does have some additional documentation here, but I didn't find that until after I figure stuff out for myself. Go figure...