Ruslan's Blog : PHP

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)

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)

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)

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)

Install PHP with Microsoft Web Platform Installer 2.0

RuslanY Blog — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 23:50:33 GMT

While the task of setting up PHP on IIS was not a difficult one, it anyway required a lot of manual installation and configuration steps . With the PHP 5.2.9-1 release the PHP development community has put a lot of improvements to the PHP installer to make it easy to setup PHP on IIS 5.1, IIS 6.0 and IIS 7.0. The latest PHP installer can be downloaded from the PHP community site . Now, with the release of Microsoft Web Platform Installer 2.0 Beta (Web PI), the task of enabling PHP on Windows OS has become the easiest it has ever been. Here are the three simple steps you need to follow: Go to http://php.iis.net/ Click on the big blue button “Click to Install PHP on IIS”. This will prompt you to install Web Platform Installer 2.0 Beta if you do...(read more)

Windows Installer for PHP 5.2.9 RC and PHP 5.3 Beta

RuslanY Blog — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 01:14:00 GMT

I am pleased to let everyone know that PHP development community has made significant improvements to the installer in upcoming PHP releases. In particular a number of bugs have been fixed to make the installer work well with FastCGI extension in IIS 5.1 and IIS 6.0 and with FastCGI module in IIS 7.0. Now the installer will do for you many of the configuration steps that previously you had to complete manually by following the instructions in the article Using FastCGI to Host PHP Applications on IIS 7.0 . Specifically, the installer will: Unpack PHP core files and extensions Make changes to the php.ini to enable necessary extensions and specify correct extension path Create and configure a new FastCGI process pool for PHP executable Create a...(read more)

How to secure WordPress admin directory on IIS 7.0

RuslanY Blog — Sat, 07 Feb 2009 01:00:36 GMT

Recently I was told about Smashing Magazine , which turned out to be a pretty useful site. It is targeted for web developers and web designers and it contains tons of information, tools and freebies for web developers. One of the article on that site was about 10 Steps To Protect The Admin Area in WordPress . In that article step #7 described how to use web server’s built-in authentication to provide an extra protection layer for wp-admin directory, where all WordPress admin scripts are located. The article described how to do that in Apache by using .htaccess file. In this post I will explain how to protect WordPress wp-admin directory on IIS 7.0 by using IIS built-in Forms Authentication. Prerequisites First thing to make sure is to confirm...(read more)

Silverlight Media Player plugin for WordPress

RuslanY Blog — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 00:07:00 GMT

At some point I wanted to integrate a Silverlight based player into my blog, so I was looking for a WordPress plugin that would do that. However, I could not find any that was easy enough to use. So I decided to write one myself for self-educational purposes. This post describes and demonstrates the plugin that I wrote and explains how to use it to add Silverlight-based media players to blog posts and pages of a WordPress powered blog. Description and Features The plugin has the following features: Default player configuration settings, such as size, thumbnail, auto load and auto play. Per-instance player configuration settings that can be used to customize each individual player within or across blog posts. Unlimited number of players within...(read more)

Speed up WordPress on IIS 7.0

RuslanY Blog — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 01:46:00 GMT

The performance of WordPress may be sufficient for an average blog that gets a few page hits per minute. However, if your blog post suddenly shows up on digg.com or any other social networking site, it may become challenging for server to handle such huge spike in traffic. A few options exist to help server to cope with flood of requests: IIS Output Caching WP Cache plugin for WordPress WP Super Cache plugin for WordPress In this post I will explain the benefits and drawbacks of each option and walk through the steps for configuring IIS and WordPress to use those options. Prerequisites Before performing the configuration steps described in this post, it is necessary to complete the following prerequisites: Install WordPress (Follow the instructions...(read more)

Enable custom errors in WordPress on IIS 7.0

RuslanY Blog — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 17:05:29 GMT

Recently, I found out that my WordPress powered blog did not correctly handle 404 - File Not Found errors. When a request was made to a non-existent page, then instead of getting nice WordPress based error page, visitors used to get a generic IIS 7.0 404 error page. Somehow, I have missed that part of the configuration when I set up WordPress initially. The fix for that turned out to be very simple, but since it seems to be a very common configuration task when hosting WordPress on IIS 7.0, I decided to explain the necessary configuration steps. By default IIS is configured to return detailed error messages for local requests and custom error messages for remote requests. So when request is made to http://ruslany.net/boguspage , the server returns...(read more)