Written by:
2009/10/19 09:56 AM 

Wordpress is probably the most used and most famous blogging software around today. A lot of CMS’s do have blog modules within the CMS. But they are either limited or the CMS is too much overkill for just a blog. Traditionally Wordpress requirements are Linux, PHP, and Apache. But what about Vista and IIS7? Would it work?

I have used Wordpress on the LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) environment before, but wanted to see if I could get it to work on a Windows Vista environment, WIMP (Windows, IIS, MySQL, PHP). I browsed a few Wordpress sites including Wordpress.com and Wordpress.org, but there is not much mentioned about installing Wordpress on a windows environment. I suppose the preferred environment is Linux.

I had already installed PHP 5.2, as well as MySQL 5. The requirement for Wordpress was PHP 4.3 and MySQL 4.0. So I was ok there. I just had to download and install Wordpress. I went to the Wordpress download site and downloaded Wordpress 2.8.4

Installing Wordpress is pretty simple. It is just a matter of unzipping the zip file into a folder. Make the needed corrections and viola. Following this installation guide was a great help.

IIS7.0

In IIS Management console, create a site and bind the site to the needed port. I used 8081 because I had other stuff running on port 80, and this was just a test anyway and port numbers will not make a difference.

FastCGI.

Most newer and recent PHP applications require FastCGI to work correctly with IIS. FastCGI is preinstalled if you have Vista SP1 and IIS7.0, but for IIS 6 you have to install the FastCGI module.  More information about the update is available here.

Seeing that I had already installed FastCGI when installing Joomla, I felt that I did not need to go through this process again. If you want to follow my direction, then browse to my blog post; Installing Joomla onto Vista, IIS7 with PHP5.2 and MySQL 5. Although I go through a lot of stuff for Joomla, the IIS/PHP installation and configuration will work.

But here is a short recap. You can add the CGI feature by going to Control Panel -> Programs and Features -> Turn Windows features on or off.  This enables both the CGI and FastCGI services. If it is already checked, it was suggested that I uncheck it, restart vista, then recheck it to add the feature back again and restart Vista.

MySQL Wordpress Database.

Next thing to do was to create the MySQL database for Wordpress. Once again a pretty simple thing. You have to create a database as well as a user. I created a database called wordpress, and a user called wordpress. Not very original I know.

You can create the database and user in various ways. I used a MySQL Client management tool called EMS SQL manager for MySQL. I used the freeware version.

Or you can use the command line. Follow the instructions at the wordpress.org site or the same instructions found in the zip file.

Or you can use an online tool like phpMyAdmin, which is a browser based MySQL configuration tool.

Configuring Wordpress.

Once again, configuring wordpress was easy. Just a matter of following the instructions in creating and changing the wp-config.php file. All I had to do is open the wp-config-sample file. Make the necessary changes and save as wp-config.php. here is an example

/** The name of the database for WordPress */
define('DB_NAME', 'wordpress');
/** MySQL database username */
define('DB_USER', 'wordpress');
/** MySQL database password */
define('DB_PASSWORD', 'mypassword');
/** MySQL hostname */
define('DB_HOST', 'localhost');
/** Database Charset to use in creating database tables. */
define('DB_CHARSET', 'utf8');
/** The Database Collate type. Don't change this if in doubt. */
define('DB_COLLATE', '');

IIS 7 URL Rewrite Module support

WordPress development community has added a built-in support for IIS 7 URL Rewrite Module in the upcoming WordPress 2.8 release. Starting with version 2.8 the Permalink Settings page will allow you to easily configure “pretty permalinks” URL structure when WordPress is running on IIS 7 with URL Rewrite Module v1.1 installed.

Seeing that I had already installed the Rewrite Module, I did not need to do anything else.

Running WordPress

Now that I had all the preliminaries done, it was just a matter of running the wordpress blog to see if it all worked. I decided to run the WordPress install script just in case I missed something. localhost:8081/wp-admin/install.php was what it was. Replace the localhost and port to what ever you used and installed as.

You will find that the WordPress welcome screen is now shown. You can now configure the following — use your own info:

Blog Title: The Brave WordPress Blogger
Your E-mail: email
Click Install Wordpress after you are done.

For a fantastic tutorial and detailed instructions on how to install WordPress with IIS7 including PHP and MySQL go to this fantastic Tutorial, Installing WordPress on IIS 7 – Part 1

Following the instructions and filling in what is needed is all that you would need to do. You are then given an admin username and generated password, which you can change later, and your WordPress blog is up and running.

Conclusion

I found this installation a lot simpler than I had expected and a lot easier than the Joomla installation. Perhaps because I had already done a whole lot of work when installing Joomla. Nevertheless it was a breeze.

I plan to use WordPress when I go to the UK for a month. Doing this install gave me come confidence that I would be able to use wordpress on any platform, whether I choose to use Linux or Windows.

Are you using Wordpress? What is it like? Have you installed Wordpress on Windows and IIS? Have you had any issues? Please let us know you thoughts in the comment box below.

Related Reading:

Installing Joomla onto Vista, IIS7 with PHP5.2 and MySQL 5

Which is better Blogger.com vs Wordpress.com?

Writing PHP Code in Visual Studio

Is PHP a skill set or a professional track.

C# (.NET) vs PHP Which is a better web development platform

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