How to Host a Silverlight Page

Silverlight is a web application framework developed by Microsoft. The framework is similar to Adobe Flash, allowing developers to bring together text, images, animations, videos, and interactivity in one environment. Hosting Silverlight applications on Microsoft servers running the current version of IIS requires no additional work; IIS supports the format by default. Deploying Silverlight on an Apache server requires the addition of several MIME types associated with the framework's file extensions.

Instructions

1. Open the root Apache folder. Log into your server and access the root Apache folder. This folder is generally located under /bin/apache/Apachex.x.x, where x.x.x represents your Apache version number.

2. Open Apache's MIME type file. From the root Apache folder, access the /conf/ folder, where configuration settings files are stored. Locate the file named "mime.types" and open it. The file contains hundreds of lines of text, each controlling a different media type, and in many cases a file extension as well.

3. Add five MIME types related to Silverlight. Find the last entry in mime.types that begins with "application." Enter a blank line. Copy the five MIME types below and paste them on the blank line:

   application/octet-stream deploy
   application/xaml+xml xaml
   application/x-ms-application application
   application/x-ms-xbap xbap
   application/x-silverlight-app xap

4. Restart your server. The new MIME types will take effect after Apache restarts. Silverlight applications can be hosted on your website after this point.

References

• John Liao: Hosting Silverlight applications on Apache Web Server
• Big Nose Bird: Adding MIME types to the Apache server configuration

Resources

• Read this Article in Spanish