Creating a customised 503 page in IIS 7

Question

This is my first question :)

Is there any way to create a cutomised 503 error page in IIS7. Form what I have read, this error page is served up internally by http.sys and cannot be overriden. This is confirmed at the top of this page.

However, I have seen Questions on Stackoverflow where this is apparently possible, but I have had no luck trying to implement it. Could anyone give me a definitive answer?

Thanks in advance.

When would you expect your 503 error to be returned? – Paul Turner Sep 11 '13 at 10:32 — Paul Turner, Sep 11 '13 at 10:32
When the site or app pool is stopped. – juju Sep 11 '13 at 11:01 — juju, Sep 11 '13 at 11:01

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Sep 11 '13 at 11:57

2

Sadly, the TechNet article is accurate - there is no way to replace 503 for the scenario you describe.

The error is detected by the IIS server as it attempts to hand the incoming request to your application. Everything your application does is performed in its app pool. Modules like rewrite rules and custom HTTP responses are all executed in this way.

If your application has no app pool to run in, it unavailable to do any custom processing: there is essentially no code running for your application.

answered Sep 11 '13 at 11:57

Paul Turner

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Thanks for confirming this. – juju Sep 11 '13 at 12:00
Hi I have a question, what about app_offline.htm? Is that considered an exception to this? – eastboundr May 13 '14 at 14:13
From what I understand, `app_offline.htm` is invoked inside ASP.NET and therefore inside its worker process in the app pool. If the pool is not running, ASP.NET cannot do any work. – Paul Turner May 13 '14 at 14:29

Creating a customised 503 page in IIS 7

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