Vanity URLs with GoDaddy Hosting using URL Rewrite

GoDaddy is a very affordable web hosting provider and domain registrar. I often recommend them to most of my clients who don't already have hosting set up. Unfortunately, GoDaddy does not allow you to access the IIS panel directly which sometimes makes a simple task slightly more complex as you have to navigate through their hosting control center, or sometimes entirely unfeasible. However, for the most part, they provide you with everything you would need to host most websites for a nominal fee.

I've recently had the need to create a portal that used vanity urls for each user profile on the site. For instance, if Aaron, Bob and Carl all have profiles on the portal, their respective portals may be:
Aaron: digitalplaydoh.com/profile.aspx?id=2
Bob: digitalplaydoh.com/profile.aspx?id=5
Carl: digitalplaydoh.com/profile.aspx?id=31

The client would like users to be able to select a unique ID for their account that can be typed out after the domain that will take users straight to their profile, similar to what you would find on Facebook or MySpace. ie:
Aaron: digitalplaydoh.com/aaronsmith
Bob: digitalplaydoh.com/bigbob
Carl: digitalplaydoh.com/carl


Microsoft's URL Rewrite module comes preinstalled on GoDaddy accounts with IIS 7.0. Here's where things get a little unfortunate for the GoDaddy developer. While running IIS 7.0, you will be unable to use Front Page Extensions, which means if you're using Visual Studio, you'll need to now connect to the site with the FTP method. Not terrible, but definitely a little slower.

Once you're running IIS 7.0, we're ready to start using the Microsoft URL Rewrite module. Open your web.config file and go to the <system.webServer> and add the following:

<system.webServer>
    <rewrite>
        <rules>
            <rule name="RewriteCheck" stopProcessing="true">
                <match url="^(.*)$" />
                <conditions logicalGrouping="MatchAll">
                    <add input="{REQUEST_FILENAME}" 
                        matchType="IsFile" 
                        negate="true" />
                    <add input="{REQUEST_FILENAME}" 
                        matchType="IsDirectory" 
                        negate="true" />
                </conditions>
                <action type="Rewrite" url="Profile.aspx?key={R:0}" />
            </rule>
        </rules>
    </rewrite>
</system.webServer>

This allows us to find any path that is not a file or directory, and redirect it to Profile.aspx?key=(path). This means I need to now make sure that Profile.aspx can support me passing a "key" request parameter in instead of an "id", which is just a little work in how we pull from the database, but we've otherwise now go the ability to go to http://digitalplaydoh.com/carl and get Carl's profile page.

Note that you also need to be ready for an incorrect "key". Should I accidently type http://digitalplaydoh.com/calr, you need to be able to catch this as a incorrect keyword and show a proper error page.