Bill Staples has pointed out a tutorial from Dennis Chung about setting up Wordpress on an IIS7 server with MySQL on the Windows Server 2008 Server Core.

Wow. Take Windows Server 2008 Server Core + PHP + IIS7 + MySQL + WordPress, mix them together, will they blend well and work out as a nice concoction? Matty challenged me to this blend, and guess what, we have a powerful cocktail to offer after all!

He breaks the tutorial up into serveral topics like:

• the hardware used
• the use of virtualization in the setup
• setting up Windows Server Core on the network
• setting up FastCGI and PHP on the IIS server
• loading MySQL onto the server
• installing and configuring Wordpress

On the Zend Developer Zone today there's a new article by Elizabeth Smith about one of the latest offerings from Microsoft to the online community - FastCGI for IIS6.

What is FastCGI? I could go on for pages about the technical background, and Microsoft already has some great documentation on the subject, however I'll put it in layman's terms for those who aren't Computer Science majors. [...] CGI is a method that a web server can use for tools like PHP, Perl, or any other language that support it. CGI spawns a new process for each request, which can be really slow. FastCGI speeds this up with a very simple solution '" instead of creating a brand new process for each request, it creates a "pool" of processes and reuses them.

She talks about her usage of PHP on Windows platforms in her work, about a move her company made from Apache to IIS and how much the FastCGI functionality helped. She also briefly explains how to get IIS and FastCGI to work together to make the PHP functionality happen.

In an effort to further the spread of the use of PHP on IIS, the Channel 9 Forums have posted a screencast showing you exactly how to get PHP installed and create a simple site.

In this screencast, discover how easy it is to get PHP up and configured on your IIS7 webserver using FastCGI. The popular PHP-based blogging application, Wordpress, is used to demonstrate.

Additionally, we see how quickly and easily we can integrate a PHP app with IIS7's integrated pipeline as we convert Wordpress to use IIS7's built-in Forms Authentication.

It provides a click-by-click introduction to the installation and server setup you'll need to get the WordPress install working with narration the entire way. The video is a WMV, so you'll need something compatible to watch it.

As mentioned by both the Zend Developer Zone and Patrick Reilly on his blog Microsoft has officially announced their release of FastCGI for their IIS 6 web server version.

The IIS Team is eager to announce the official release of Microsoft FastCGI Extension for IIS 6.0 as a free download. For the first time, we are providing hosters and PHP developers full support for a stack of technology that enables reliable, scalable PHP hosting on production Internet Information Services 6.0 (IIS 6) Web servers.

Other bloggers mentioning this new release include:

• Gaetano Giunta
• Andi Gutmans
• Johnua Eichorn

Paul Reiheimer has set a goal for himself in light of some of the recent advancements that Microsoft has made on the PHP front - to create a successful PHP-driven, IIS served website.

In an effort to learn more about IIS (which a number of my students and contracting contacts seem to use), I have decided to challenge myself: To design, build, and launch a PHP based site, and receive at least 1,000 unique visitors a day by Feb 28, 2008, served from an IIS7 server.

Among his assets are a license to use the IIS software and a designer help with the look and feel. He also sets out requirements for the project including a local testing server, the public web host and that PHP has to be used (not something like phlanger).

Bill Staples has a new summary post on his IIS blog today covering some of the new things that IIS7 has to offer its community. Three of these pertain to PHP:

• A tutorial from Sabbir about installing PHP and MYSQL on an IIS server to get phpMyAdmin up and running (part one).
• A post from Drew Robbins about extensibility in PHP applications running on IIS.
• A how-to screencast on getting PHP and FastCGI working happily with IIS.

Alex Netkachov as a (very) quick note posted today involving the update to IIS' FastCGI and Jamp!:

Go Live FastCGI for IIS release was announced and I've added is to Jamp!. PHP.IIS command now can install PHP on IIS over FastCGI or over ISAPI filter.

Jamp! is an easy installer for a Java, Apache, MySQL and PHP setup. It makes it a simple, one-click operation to get it up and running. Get more information about the installation and downloads from this post.

As both Bill and the Zend Developer Zone announce, the latest version of the FastCGI extension for IIS has been released:

Microsoft is eager to announce availability of the Go Live release of Microsoft FastCGI Extension for IIS 5.1/6.0 (FastCGI Extension) as a free download from the IIS community site, www.iis.net. The Go Live release is the last step in the Microsoft beta process and represents thehighest level of quality and reliability. For the first time, customers have a license that permits them to deploy the FastCGI Extension on their production Internet Information Services 6.0 (IIS 6) Web servers.

Bill answers a few key questions - like "is it ready for production?" and "where do I get it?" while the Zend Developer Zone gives more of the background on the path the extension has taken, how it's supported and what sort of future Microsoft has planned for it.

In a new post today Alex Netkachov steps through how he added the PHP scripting engine to his metabase scriptMaps on an IIS 5.1 web server:

I spent a few days on investigating how to modify IIS metabase from script. What I need is to add PHP engine to IIS programmatically during installing PHP. [...] The metabase object can be enumerated and each item of the enumeration can be enumerated to. The elements of this hierarchy represent folders you can see in IIS management console.

He builds out the ScriptMaps functionality (a recursive "walk" function) and another function to add the PHP scripting engine onto that (addPhpIsapi). A word of warning from Alex, though:

This code now is the part of Jamp installer. But because this functionality is dangerous, this code is not run during default installer and it recommended to backup the metabase before running it.

On his blog today, BillS shares a video of a guide to installing FastCGI and PHP onto an IIS7 Beta 3 system:

Beta 3 release marks the first time the FastCGI feature has been a part of a Windows release, enabling PHP and other application frameworks to run on Windows with great performance and reliability. Making them a part of IIS and Windows means no more downloading and installing other components, or worrying about whether the tools you are using are supported, patched and ready for production use.

The video itself (Quicktime, Windows Media) shows how to make the install and how to use the output caching feature he previously talked about to enhance the performance of your applications. For those that don't want to bother with the video (or can't view it for whatever reason), he also includes the steps at the bottom of the post.