PHP on IIS

Question

Having been a PHP developer on LAMP servers for quite a while, is there anything that I will need to take into consideration while preparing an application for IIS on windows.

Answer 1

Make sure you get the FastCGI extension for IIS 6.0 or IIS 7.0. It is the single most important thing you can have when running PHP under IIS. Also this article should get you setup:

http://learn.iis.net/page.aspx/247/using-fastcgi-to-host-php-applications-on-iis-60/

Everything beyond this is simple, MySQL and what not.

Answer 2

One of the major sticking points I've had with IIS is the lack of Apache's mod_rewrite. There are other work-arounds and work-alikes depending on what you're doing, but just keep in mind that you'll need to change things up a bit to work with IIS if you're using mod rewrite extensively.

Answer 3

We just rolled out PHP 5.2.6 + FastCGI on our shared hosting platform without any problems. As long as you follow the steps outlined in the article Nick linked to then you should be just fine. My only additional piece of advice would be to forget about using the fcgiconfig.js script to modify the fcgiext.ini file, it's more of a hindrance than a help. Just edit it by hand, you also learn more about how it works.

If you're installing PHP onto IIS 7, then this link should be worth a read through -

http://learn.iis.net/page.aspx/246/using-fastcgi-to-host-php-applications-on-iis7/

HTH

Answer 4

@pix0r

That actually annoyed the hell out of me too and nothing came close to Apache mod_rewrite. Because they all have this overly complex XML structure. So I actually took the time and wrote my own rewriter for IIS 6.0 and IIS 7.0. Non-.NET applications only works in IIS 7.0.

http://www.managedfusion.com/products/url-rewriter/

http://www.codeplex.com/urlrewriter

Answer 5

Since you're moving from LAMP (a somewhat cool acronym) to WIMP (a less cool one), you may need to mentally affirm yourself. Otherwise, I've had very little trouble with PHP on Windows.

ISAPI rewrite (http://www.isapirewrite.com/) is $99 and has worked very well for me for URL rewriting.

Answer 6

Why not go with Apache on Windows?