Stop WebMatrix from opening every folder on double-click

Just when you thought in 2012, Microsoft, out of the kindess of their heart (or by finally listening to the public they’ve been shafting for years) wouldn’t do something completely asinine with their software…

If you’ve installed Microsoft WebMatrix lately, you may have noticed that it has the ability to open a folder as a website by right clicking and selecting “Open as a Web Site with Microsoft WebMatrix”. The problem is that now it opens every single folder just by double clicking on.

Fire up RegEdit and navigate to :
\HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Directory\shell

Find a key called “OpenAsAWebsite”. You’ll find a subkey called “command”. Copy the default value of the key and delete it and its parent “OpenAsAWebSite”.

Now navigate to:
\HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Folder\shell\ContextMenuHandlers

Add a new key here called “OpenAsAWebSite” (like the one above) and give this a default value of “Open as a Web Site with Microsoft WebMatrix”. Then create a “command” key under it, just like you saw before, and change its default value by pasting what you copied from before. Or if you forgot to copy it, change to the install directory of WebMatrix if necessary and paste the following :

C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft WebMatrix\WebMatrix.exe #ExecuteCommand# SiteFromFolder %L

Now you should still be able to use the Open as Web Site feature in WM, but not have it happen by default when you try to open every bloody folder.

Note to Microsoft:
I know you’ll ignore this, but stop being stupid!

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