"The -v switch specifies the virtual directory of the site. If your site is registered as the default website in the IIS metabase then you can omit the -p switch and just specify the virtual directory of the application. If you use the -p switch, the value proceeding the -v switch indicates the root of the website, and is used to resolve application-root references. For instance, if you specify a value of -v /MySite then references in the application to ~/path/file will be resolved as ~/MySite/path/file. Because the Book Reviews site is located at the root directory at my web hosting company I have used the switch -v /."