"... is an invalid IP address" when editing a site binding in IIS

I was trying to change a binding in IIS 7 on a VPC to test something out and I wanted to make the url "http://intranet" point to my newly created web application on port 567.

To do this, I went to the web site in IIS, right clicked on it, selected "Edit Bindings...", selected the only entry there, clicked "Edit..." and filled in "http://intranet" in the "Host name" box. When I clicked on "OK", I got the message "'*:567' is an invalid IP address.". Turns out you can't fill in "http://" there, which makes sense cause it's already mentioned in the "Type" field, but I still think it's not a clear error message you get...

So long story short: just fill in the actual host name and not the "http" part.

Error when deploying a solution

Today I was trying to install one of the "fantastic 40" templates and when I tried deploying the wsp file, the job started running and resulted in an "error" state. There was nothing in the Event Logs and nothing in the ULS logs either. After some reading on the MS forum, I saw a post where someone suggested (for a similar problem) that the Windows SharePoint Services Administration service had to be running. So I restarted this service on all servers and tried to deploy again... and it worked! I don't know if this will apply in all situations where you just get an error when deploying a solution (most likely not), but it's something you can give a try...

Something completely different this time...

I just want to do a little promotion this time. I've got a friend who's a photographer and together we've created a website to showcase some of her work. So you should all go to www.sarahdewilde.be and give her pictures a look!