Visual Studio 2013 Asp.net Razor v3 website unable to host to IIS windows 7.5

Question

I am trying to host a asp.net razor v3 website to IIS, but it is not working. I tried multiple options including first creating the website then publishing to IIS, or directly creating a new website under IIS using visual studio 2013. It gives me HTTP Error 503. The service is unavailable.

Methods to reproduce Error: Option 1 1) Create a new asp.net web site (razor v3) in visual 2013, and click publish to publish to a directory. Then, add that directory as a website in IIS.

Option 2 1) On the new website window, in visual studio 2013, go to browse and select IIS, and create a virtual directory directory under IIS to save the site.

Then, go to the browser and try to access the hosted site: localhost/sitename, it always produces some kind of errors. Like 503. What am I missing? Please help, looks like I am missing some steps or some configuration changes.

Also, I am trying this with the default razor v3 webiste content and without modifying anything. So, I have not touched any files or anything, I am just trying to upload to IIS.

Answer 1

The correct answer I found was that for some reason you must use the IIS Express 8.5 to test/host that site.

Even the installations on the fresh copies of Windows with Full IIS prior to version 8 did not work on my test machines.