The last time I installed PHP on Windows for serious testing (with Windows that is) was probably in 2002. It was a really painful process that involved (if I recall correctly) manually copying ISAPI DLLs and other obscure (to me) files to various directories to get it up and running with the Apache web server for Windows. And, after installng it… well, there were still some oddities that left me uncomfortable. However, the story from Microsoft, Zend, and SpikeSource for the past week has been that FastCGI fixes those performance issues. I’ll find out what installing and configuring PHP for Windows and IIS is like when I test it out myself this weekend on Windows Server 2008 in a virtual machine (in case I mess up :-). In the meantime, check out the commentary from Microsoft’s Hank Janssen about working with Zend to optimize PHP for Windows…
You can also find a video about configuring PHP with IIS7 and then modifying Wordpress to use IIS7’s Forms Authentication.
Installing PHP Applications on IIS7 (13 minutes)
You can see and hear Hank himself along with John Bocharov talk about the SQL Server Drive for PHP running on Windows at..
John Bocharov and Hank Janssen: Introduction to SQL Server Driver for PHP (SQLPHP)
If you are developing PHP on Windows, I would recommend you install XAMPP by ApacheFriends. It installs the full Apache, MySQL and PHP with a super easy installer and then control window. I would only use IIS if I need both PHP AND ASP
What I mean a good joke :) 13 min video, brimful with scrolling, clicking and all other funny stuff.
Spend four minutes for minimal FreeBSD installation plus 10 min including downloading for Apache, MySQL, PHP and voila = ligthspeed, ligthweight real secure web server :)
Ivaylo can you be constructive ?
Ask an experienced Windows admin to for an install of Apache, MySQL and PHP and they can do it in a few minutes. Put them on FreeBSD and it'll take them longer, of course.
Likewise, give an experienced FreeBSD admin the same task and it will take them just as long, but put them on Windows and they won't have a clue what to do.
Oh, XAMPP. Interesting.
Yeah, I just don't get IIS+PHP. I do get:
* Windows+Apache+PHP
* Windows+IIS+ASP