In a recent post to his blog Stuart Herbert asks his readers where they get their Windows PHP binaries from - there's more than just windows.php.net out there after all.

I’m currently working out installation instructions for phix on Microsoft Windows before my sessions at PHPNW 11 and ZendCon in October...and I need your help, because it has been many years now since I used Windows. If you do your PHP development using Windows on the desktop or laptop, where do you prefer to get your copy of PHP from?

He offers a few options: the obvious windows.php.net, the Microsoft Web Platform or a package like XAMPP/WAMP. In the comments of the post favorites include the Web Platform Installer and windows.php.net with the package versions (XAMPP/WAMP) coming in behind.

On SitePoint.com today there's a quick tutorial showing how you can quickly and easily install PHP on Windows via the Web Platform Installer.

Earlier this year Microsoft released a small piece of software called the Web Platform Installer (Web PI)—a dead-simple way to install a complete suite of web software on your Windows machine. [...] To show you how simple it is to use and to give you an idea of what software is available, I’ll walk through the installation of PHP with the Web PI, as well as a few key PHP apps from scratch.

Once you have it downloaded and configured, you can go over to the "Web Platform" tab and select PHP to be installed (still in the PHP 5.2 series). Under the web applications tab there's various apps you can also install including WordPress and SugarCRM. Click "Install" and you should be all set - the Installer sets up the webserver (IIS) running PHP and a database (like MySQL or SQL Server).

Lauren Cooney has a new post to her blog today talking about the efforts that Microsoft is making to work with the communities of several different languages - PHP included - in their Web Platform project.

At Microsoft I find it’s sometimes a mixed bag. The terminology that I use is that we’re a huge ship – and it takes awhile to get people in line to move that ship in the right direction. Cal Evans outlined this beautifully in a blog entry recently – and I think he gives a fair assessment of where we’re at and some of the things we could do to improve. That said, our teams that are driving the Microsoft Web Platform are really working to nail this. We started out with a vision – a very simple statement with lots of work that goes on behind the scenes.

She talks about improvements made and enhancements added to the Web Platform tool including the Installer and the inclusion of PHP into it. They're not stopping there, though - she's asking for feed back (here, here or here) on what you think and what should be considered for the future of the project.