What's the best way to develop against WordPress on Windows when you already have IIS/SQL Server installed?

Question

If you want to develop against WordPress (i.e., have a local instance running on your machine so you can develop themes, get blogs and sites laid out, etc.) and you're running Windows on your development machine with IIS and SQL Server already installed, what's the best way to do it?

I found a method online which sets up a little "mini" server on Windows running instances of Apache and MySQL but they didn't advise using it on a machine with IIS already installed. Obviously one could install Apache and MySQL and do it that way but given what Windows affords you (i.e., methods of running PHP in IIS - I think Windows Server 2008 is even optimized for this), is that the best way? Are there ways to run WordPress with SQL Server as the backend? (I wouldn't think so but I thought I'd throw that out there).

And are there methods differing on the version of Windows (i.e., XP, Vista, Vista64)

Answer 1

Install PHP, run Wordpress in IIS. Install MySQL which can be run side-by-side with MSSQL. The only thing you'll miss using IIS over Apache is mod_rewrite for prettier URLs.

Avoid running IIS and Apache on the same machine if at all possible. IIS likes to bind to all available IPs blocking Apache from binding to an IP, which you can get around if necessary, but it's not immediately clear what's happening.

I've been running this setup for years.

Answer 2

I run XAMPP on a thumbdrive and install WordPress (usually multiple instances of it) on there. Then I start up XAMPP when I'm going to work on Wordpress development.

EDIT: this setup does require that IIS be stopped when the XAMPP server is running (or some byzantine configuration magic that I've never bothered to figure out. Since most of my personal needs for local IIS development are handled by the Visual Studio built-in instance of IIS, which can run side-by-side with XAMPP, I rarely have bother with anything else, but that probably won't work for everyone.

Answer 3

Since you are interested in developing for Wordpress I strongly suggest you use the most common WP setup: Apache, PHP and MySQL.

You can run Apache and IIS at the same time (I have IIS listening on port 81 and Apache on 80) or you can run only one at a time (create 2 bat files to start/stop the servers using the net start/stop command).

You can use IIS, PHP, MySQL to run Wordpress but there are some subtle differences that can drive you crazy or cause problems when you deploy on Apache.

Answer 4

You can certainly run IIS and Apache on the same box. We do it currently with Documentum/Apache and IIS on the same server. Just pick a range of addresses for one web server - 808x for Apache for example.

You should also consider using Thinstall from VMWare where you can virutalize an entire application - registry, .Net and all - distribute as a single .EXE. We do this now for packaging applications that don't play well together. You might want to virtualize Wordpress/Appache/MySql and set an IP (808x) for that configuration. This way you can move this to any server with IIS and it'll play well with different configurations.