<p>I need to deploy a web application on several laptops (although it is a web application, it is intended to run via <code>localhost</code> only - thus the need to deploy on several different machines).</p>

<p>Normally I would go to IIS and right click a directory to create a web application, but I would very much like to automate this leg of the installation. Can it be done?</p>

<p><strong>I want to use IIS, but I want to create the web application automatically without opening the IIS Microsoft Management Console (MMC).</strong></p>

To implement a minimal web server you can use HTTP.SYS (the core component of IIS deployed with Windows XP SP2 or higher). In .NET this can be done e.g. by using the HttpListener class in the
System.Net
namespace.