Microsoft has recently launched a beta release of a new project called WebMatrix. This is a complete web development stack that can be used to start developing and deploying web sites. One thing that may be not so obvious from all the existing announcements is the fact that WebMatrix has full support for installing, running and publishing PHP applications.
Here are the examples of how WebMatrix can be used to create and publish a PHP web site (using WordPress as a showcase).
Installing a PHP application
After installing and launching WebMatrix select “Site from Web Gallery” option and then pick WordPress:
Follow the installation steps as described in Download and Install a PHP application. As you proceed you will notice that WebMatrix downloads and installs the necessary components for running WordPress – the latest version of PHP 5.2 and MySQL. At the end of the installation process you will get a working instance of WordPress, that you can configure and customize further:
Notice the port number used in the URL. This is not the standard port 80 used by default in IIS. The site is not running on IIS that is included with operating system. Instead WebMatrix installs and uses IIS Developer Express, which is a developer-focused version of IIS that runs on all versions of Windows, starting from Windows XP. This is actually very cool because now it is possible to get the latest and greatest IIS features on Windows XP instead of using the good old IIS 5.1 as a development web server 
. But even if you already have Windows 7, you may still want to use IIS Developer Express, because with that you do not need to enable real IIS Web Server included with OS on your development machine.
Even though IIS Developer Express is a lightweight development server it comes with everything needed to run PHP applications, including the latest version of FastCGI module and URL Rewrite 2.0. This means that after you install WordPress with WebMatrix you can enable WordPress’ pretty permalinks by following the instructions at IIS URL Rewrite Module support in WordPress.
Note: By default WebMatrix and IIS Developer Express are not configured to run PHP even if PHP is already installed on the machine. To work this around install any PHP application via WebMatrix UI. This way WebMatrix will configure IIS Developer Express to handle PHP requests. This is something that will be fixed in future releases of WebMatrix.
Modifying a PHP application
After the WordPress is installed there are several things you can do with it from within WebMatrix. For example you can edit the theme files by using the built-in editor:
You can check what kind of HTTP requests are made by Web Browser to load a typical WordPress page:
(Learn more about this feature at Using WebMatrix Beta: Analyze Your WebSite)
Also, you can check the WordPress database content by using the WebMatrix Database Manager:
And, finally, you can run the search engine optimization analysis and fix any SEO violations found within the application:
(Learn more about this feature at Using WebMatrix Beta: Make your Website SEO Friendly)
Publishing a PHP application
The last step is the publishing of the web application on a live web server. WebMatrix can publish the content to a web server by using various protocols: FTP, FTP/SSL and WebDeploy (note that FTP protocols cannot be used to publish MySQL database). You can pick a hosting provider from the list offered by WebMatrix or you if you know the publishing settings from your hosting provider you can manually enter them in WebMatrix.
When you publish the content the WebMatrix will show you the list of files and the database that will be uploaded to the server. Note also that during publishing the WebMatrix will replace the current database connection settings in wp-config.phpfile with the connection settings used on a hosting web server. WebMatrix will extract that information from the connection string that you specify in publishing settings:
(Learn more about publishng web sites at Using WebMatrix Beta: Publish Your WebSite)
Feedback and suggestions
The WebMatrix is a beta release and the WebMatrix team is open to any constructive feedback on how to improve the product. Do you have any suggestions or have you run into any problems when using WebMatrix? What PHP related features would you like to see in this product? Please let the team know by starting the thread on WebMatrix forum or by leaving a comment here.
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