Problem statement

For ease of use I had put a web application using IIS Express at port 80. This implies that later on using IIS (the real one) didn’t work anymore because it uses port 80 by default too.

So I started looking in VS2012 for a way to change IIS Express settings. This doesn’t seem to be possible, so here comes the way that I found.

Changing IIS Express settings

This is a bit tricky.

1. Start an application in IIS Express (in Visual Studio).
2. The IIS express icon will appear in the Notification Area (by default right of the taskbar)
3. Right-click the icon > Show all applications
4. Click on the site that you want to change (not on its URL, as this will open the web application in your browser). Below you find its path, and more importantly the location of its config file (URI).
5. Click on the config file URI and you see the contents of it. Now you can change the settings. It *may* be a good idea to first take a backup of this file.