Ruslan's Blog

WinCache Extension 1.0 for PHP – Release to Web

RuslanY Blog — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 19:01:05 GMT

The Windows Cache Extension 1.0 for PHP – RTW is available for download. This is a final, production-ready release that is provided under an open source BSD license with the source code hosted and maintained on http://pecl.php.net/packages/wincache/ . Install the Windows Cache Extension 1.0 for PHP – RTW To install the Windows Cache Extension for PHP 5.2 and PHP 5.3, use the download links at the extension’s home page at http://www.iis.net/expand/WinCacheForPhp . The installation with Web Platform Installer is the easiest as it will automatically place the extension binary into proper location and will update the PHP configuration to enable the extension. Also, if you have the beta or RC release of the extension installed,...(read more)

IIS Documentation Updates on PHP.NET

RuslanY Blog — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 19:18:44 GMT

PHP.NET web site is known for its well written and very detailed documentation. The excellent content together with tons of user contributed notes has made the PHP.NET the primary place for getting the help on all PHP related questions. However there was one thing in the PHP docs that was still not up-to-date. The Windows and IIS-specific installation and configuration sections did not cover the latest changes in Windows, such as IIS 7 and FastCGI. Now I am glad to let everyone know that this part of the PHP documentation is also being updated! Check out the first batch of updates: Manual Installation Steps Microsoft IIS 5.1 and IIS 6.0 Microsoft IIS 7.0 and later The content is still being updated and there are plans to add more instructions...(read more)

URL Rewrite Module v2 – Release Candidate

RuslanY Blog — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 18:42:00 GMT

The URL Rewrite Module 2.0 – Release Candidate is available for download . The release contains functionality and stability improvements and it is believed to have a quality level suitable for production deployments. Overview Microsoft URL Rewrite Module 2.0 for IIS 7 is an incremental release that includes all the features from version 1.1 , and adds support for outbound response headers and content rewriting. More specifically, it can be used to: Replace the URLs generated by a web application in the response HTML with a more user friendly and search engine friendly equivalent Modify the links in the HTML markup generated by a web application behind a reverse proxy. Fix up the content of any HTTP response by using regular expression pattern...(read more)

Windows Cache Extension 1.0 for PHP – RC

RuslanY Blog — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 05:45:47 GMT

The Windows Cache Extension 1.0 for PHP – Release Candidate is available for download. The release contains functionality and stability improvements and it is believed to have the quality level suitable for production deployments. Install the Windows Cache Extension 1.0 for PHP – RC To install the Windows Cache Extension for PHP 5.2 and PHP 5.3, use the download links at the extension’s home page at http://www.iis.net/extensions/wincacheforphp . The installation with Web Platform Installer is the easiest as it will automatically place the extension binary into proper location and will update the PHP configuration to enable the extension. Also, if you have the beta release of the extension installed, then Web PI will upgrade...(read more)

Enable PHP Syntax Highlighting on IIS 7

RuslanY Blog — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 04:57:49 GMT

This post describes how to configure IIS 7 to output syntax highlighted source code for PHP files stored on the web server or site. This feature may be useful for development environments when you want to quickly make the source code accessible to other team members. WARNING: Never attempt to do what is described below on any internet accessible web site! Doing so will greatly compromise the security of your web application. The HTTP requests for the PHP source code are usually identified by the “.phps” file extension, e.g. http://localhost/index.phps . You will need to configure IIS to understand and handle the HTTP requests with this extension. There are two options for that: to create an IIS handler mapping for “*.phps”...(read more)

Windows Cache Extension for PHP and CPU usage

RuslanY Blog — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 00:17:49 GMT

The FastCGI module in IIS has a configuration setting maxInstances , which controls the number of concurrently running php-cgi.exe processes that IIS creates to process PHP requests. To achieve optimal performance, it is recommended to fine tune this setting for your specific environment starting with 8-10 instances per CPU core (e.g. maxInstances=32 for quad-core CPU). The Windows Cache Extension for PHP can be used to improve performance of PHP applications running on Windows operating systems. The extension caches the compiled PHP opcode in the shared memory, which helps to avoid re-doing of such CPU intensive operations as parsing and compiling of the PHP source code. This means that when Windows Cache Extension for PHP is enabled, less...(read more)

Windows Cache Extension 1.0 for PHP – Beta

RuslanY Blog — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 17:10:37 GMT

Today IIS team has released the beta of the Windows Cache Extension 1.0 for PHP . The Windows Cache Extension for PHP is a PHP accelerator , that is used to increase the speed of PHP applications running on the Windows operating systems. Any PHP application can take advantage of the functionality provided by the Windows Cache Extension for PHP without any code modifications. All that is required is that the extension is enabled and loaded by the PHP engine. Install the Windows Cache Extension 1.0 for PHP – Beta or, download: Windows Cache Extension 1.0 for PHP 5.2 – Beta Windows Cache Extension 1.0 for PHP 5.3 – Beta Follow the instructions at “ Using Windows Cache Extension for PHP ” to install, enable and configure...(read more)

New release of Silverlight Player for WordPress

RuslanY Blog — Sat, 15 Aug 2009 22:11:56 GMT

Today I have published a new release of the WP Silverlight Media Player plugin for WordPress. In addition to a few important improvements and optimizations, it contains a new feature that allows to track the number of times the video files have been watched and how many of those have been watched until the end. Once you install or upgrade to this version of the plugin you should see a new menu group in the WordPress Dashboard: From that menu you can get to the Statistics page where you can see how many times your site visitors watched your video files: The implementation idea for the statistics page was re-used from the WP-Postratings , which is a very popular plugin written by Lester ‘GaMerZ’ Chan. Other improvements in this version...(read more)

Visual Studio XML IntelliSense for URL Rewrite 1.1

RuslanY Blog — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 21:05:44 GMT

If you ever tried to write or modify rewrite rules in web.config file by using Visual Studio 2008 XML Editor, you may have noticed that the Visual Studio XML IntelliSense does not work for all URL Rewrite Module configuration elements. This is because the XML schema for <rewrite> element is not registered in Visual Studio Schema Cache . This post provides the instructions on how to register URL Rewrite schema with Visual Studio to enable IntelliSense support. To enable IntelliSense support for URL Rewrite 1.1 follow these steps: Step 1: Download the URL Rewrite schema from the location below: VS IntelliSense for URL Rewrite Disclaimer: The schema file and the helper script file contained in this package are provided by me and not by Microsoft...(read more)

URL Rewrite Module 2.0 for IIS 7 – Beta

RuslanY Blog — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 22:46:11 GMT

Today IIS team has released the URL Rewrite Module 2.0 for IIS 7 – Beta. This is an incremental release that includes all the features from version 1.1, and adds support for outbound response rewriting. More specifically, it can be used to: Replace the URLs generated by a web application in the response HTML with a more user friendly and search engine friendly equivalent Modify the links in the HTML markup generated by a web application behind a reverse proxy. Fix up the content of any HTTP response by using regular expression pattern matching Install the URL Rewrite Module 2.0 Beta or, download: URL Rewrite Module 2.0 for IIS 7 – Beta (x86) URL Rewrite Module 2.0 for IIS 7 – Beta (x64) Note: URL Rewrite v1.0 and v2.0 cannot...(read more)

Per-site PHP configuration with PHP 5.3 and IIS

RuslanY Blog — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 07:05:27 GMT

About a year ago I wrote an article about how to enable per-site PHP configuration on IIS with FastCGI . The instructions in that article required some non-trivial manipulations of IIS and FastCGI configuration settings. At that time it was one of the primary options for enabling per site php.ini support (other option was to use the htscanner extension for PHP ). Now, with PHP 5.3 final release available , it is much simpler to implement the same configuration because PHP 5.3 has built-in support for per-directory INI settings and for user-defined INI files. This post describes how to use these features of PHP 5.3 with IIS to enable per-site and per-directory PHP configuration. Assume that you have two web sites in IIS – website1.com and website2...(read more)

FastCGI Extension 1.5 for IIS 6.0 and IIS 5.1 – RC

RuslanY Blog — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 22:38:07 GMT

Today IIS team has released the FastCGI Extension 1.5 for IIS 6.0 and IIS 5.1 – Release Candidate. This version is based on FastCGI Extension 1.0 and it adds several important improvements and features. The release is believed to have a quality level suitable for production deployments. Install the Release Candidate of FastCGI Extension 1.5 for IIS 6.0 and IIS 5.1 or, download: FastCGI Extension 1.5 for IIS 6.0 and IIS 5.1 – RC (x86) FastCGI Extension 1.5 for IIS 6.0 and IIS 5.1 – RC (x64) Upgrade from FastCGI Extension 1.0 and 1.5 Beta releases If you already have installed FastCGI Extension v1.0 or FastCGI Extesnion v1.5 Beta, then the installation package will upgrade it to version 1.5 – RC. All the related IIS configuration...(read more)

Upgrade to WordPress 2.8 and PHP 5.3 on IIS 7

RuslanY Blog — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 06:46:56 GMT

Today I have upgraded my blog to the recently released WordPress 2.8 and to PHP 5.3 RC3 (VC9 Non Thread Safe build). If you are running WordPress (or any other PHP application) on IIS 7, then there are several reasons why it may be beneficial for you to upgrade: PHP 5.3 has a number of Windows-specific bug fixes and improvements that address stability and functionality problems which existed before when running PHP on Windows. For detailed list of all the changes and fixes, refer to the news.txt file included within the PHP zip file. PHP 5.3 has been compiled with the latest version of C compiler (VC9), which makes it run faster on Windows than any previous versions of PHP (which were compiled with VC6). WordPress 2.8 has built-in support for...(read more)

IIS 7 URL Rewrite Module support in WordPress 2.8

RuslanY Blog — Sat, 16 May 2009 07:41:00 GMT

I am pleased to let everyone know that 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. Here is how the process of updating Permalinks structure will look like in WordPress 2.8 on IIS 7: Go to Settings –> Permalinks page and choose the permalink structure that you prefer: After clicking on “Save Changes” button the generated rewrite rule will be displayed with the instructions on how to update the web.config file manually: Now you can copy the the given XML and put...(read more)

Silverlight Media Player for WordPress – Update

RuslanY Blog — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 06:33:00 GMT

Since the Silverlight Media Player plugin for WordPress was published in January 2009, it has been downloaded more than 900 times . It is being used in many web sites all over the world – here are just a couple of examples: Tribord Amure par Matthieu and Os Taekwon-do Klubb . Today, a new update of the plugin has been released. This update makes it even easier to add video content to your blog posts and pages. Download the latest version of the plugin from here: WP Media Player . The biggest improvement in this version of the plugin is the addition of the user interface for uploading video content and for insertion of the media player into blog posts and pages. Here is how it looks like. Add a media player to a blog post or a page by clicking...(read more)