Search results matching tags 'PHP' and 'ASP.NET'

Lots of new software for IIS, ASP.NET, AJAX and PHP this week

bills — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 18:13:00 GMT

Wow, what a week of innovation for the Microsoft Web Platform. This week we released a ton of new software which, if you haven’t already, you’ve got to check out. Here is a quick overview:

IIS Search Engine Optimization v1 final release!

The IIS team shipped the final release of IIS SEO toolkit which makes it easier to optimize your Website for search engines. It acts like a mini-search engine on your computer, scans your site and then provides useful tips for how to improve the relevance of your site to search engines. This tool is now out of beta and available for download through Web PI.

ASP.NET MVC 2 beta!

The ASP.NET team has been hard at work on the second release of MVC, which is now available to beta test. Phil has a great blog post on the release with links to the download page, readme notes and the source code. There are a bunch of new features in MVC 2 including AsyncController, expression based helpers, improvements with client validation, all new areas support, and more. Read more on Phil’s blog.

ASP.NET AJAX Library beta!

The ASP.NET AJAX team also has some exciting news with the release of the ASP.NET AJAX Library beta. James has a terrific blog post with the news This is the first project accepted into the new CodePlex Foundation! (more on that later) The ASP.NET AJAX Library has a new portal at www.asp.net/ajaxlibrary with tutorials, samples, and more. Read James’ post about the news and check it out!

IIS Application Request Router 2 final release!

The IIS team also released the final version of the IIS Application Request Router v2. This is a super powerful module that provides routing and load balancing capabilities for Windows and IIS. It makes it easy to create and manage an entire cluster of Web servers. Mai-lan has a lot of info on the release in her blog post and you can download ARR v2 using Web PI today.

PHP WinCache module final release - faster PHP on Windows!

The PHP team announced today the final release of the Windows Cache Extension for PHP, or WinCache for short, which makes PHP run much, much faster on Windows. The iBuildings guys released a benchmark showing how the WinCache extension speeds up PHP by as much as 2x over standard PHP. The other exciting part of this announcement is that the sources for the extension are now available under an open source BSD license and the source code is maintained and host on http://pecl.php.net/packages/wincache/ If you install PHP using Web PI, you automatically get WinCache.

Microsoft Launches New Open Source CodePlex Foundation

bills — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 19:54:25 GMT

Microsoft’s strategy with open source has evolved over the past several years as we strive to make Windows the platform of choice for customers. My team has participated in that process first hand, we’ve worked hard with the PHP community to ensure PHP runs great on Windows, integrated PHP installation into the Microsoft Web Platform Installer, and engaged some of the most popular PHP applications like WordPress, Drupal, and SugarCRM to ensure customers have a great experience running these applications on Windows and IIS. We’ve also worked closely with the jQuery project to make it a natural part of building applications with ASP.NET.

Today I am happy to be a part of the announcement that Microsoft is sponsoring an open source foundation aptly named CodePlex Foundation, whose mission is to “enable the exchange of code and understanding among software companies and open source communities”. I believe the foundation will make it easier for Microsoft and other commercial software companies to participate in open source. You can read more about the announcement in my interview with Peter Galli on Port25 and learn more about the foundation at http://codeplex.org.

The CodePlex Foundation is a completely separate organization from Microsoft. To help form the foundation, we have formed an interim board of directors comprised of three Microsoft employees and three non-Microsoft employees, and elected Sam Ramji as the President of the Board. Microsoft has also donated $1 million US dollars to help the foundation get started and is transferring the use rights to the “CodePlex” term, along with the codeplex.org domain name to the CodePlex Foundation.

I feel lucky to be a part of the interim board of directors as we spend the next 100 days working together with the board of advisors, partners and you to structure how the foundation will work. We don’t have all of the answers and need your help to make it a success. You can read more about how to participate here: http://codeplex.org/participate.aspx

As always, I look forward to hearing your comments and suggestions about the new foundation.

8 New Free ASP.NET and PHP Open Source Apps in the Web App Gallery

mailant — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 05:00:00 GMT

It's been four months since we launched the Windows Web Application Gallery, and we've been adding apps to the Gallery steadily. Today saw the arrival of SugarCRM Community Edition (CE), a free customer relationship management PHP open source application with a vibrant community. SugarCRM CE joins seven ASP.NET apps that have been added to the App Gallery, with a healthy pipeline of ASP.NET and PHP open source apps in the proces of review and approval.

All of these apps followed the Web App Gallery Principles and went through the submission process for the Web App Gallery, which is open to any app that adheres to the Principles. We have also added more Web App Gallery integration best practices for developers looking to submit links to their app in the Web App Gallery.

To sum up, here are the apps added to the Web App Gallery over the last four months, listed in alphabetical order:

Amplifeeder: ASP.NET lifestream platform aggregating online activity in one place, published by Amplifeeder.
AtomSite: ASP.NET CMS built on MVC, published by AtomSite.
KenticoCMS for ASP.NET: ASP.NET CMS, brought to you by Kentico.
mojoPortal: ASP.NET content management system, published by Source Tree Solutions, LLC
nopCommerce: ASP.NET shopping cart, published by nopCommerce.
nService: ASP.NET help desk system, published by Avensoft.
ResourceBlender.NET: ASP.NET app that helps you translate an application into multiple languages, published by ResourceBlender.NET.
SugarCRM CE: PHP customer relationship management (CRM) system, published by SugarCRM.

I have been pretty impressed with all the apps! There's a good variety of functionality, themes, templates, and customization modules to let you build your own site or system on top of the apps.

All of these apps are free and open source. If you want to check them out, visit the Web App Gallery and download from the site, or open the Web Apps tab in Web Platform Installer 2.0 and select the apps you want. Web Platform Installer handles all the downloads from Web App Gallery and also can be used as a separate standalone tool -- it makes sure that the right platform dependencies (apps, frameworks, etc.) are installed before laying down the app. For example, if the app requires IIS' URL Rewrite module for dynamic URL rewriting on Windows, like WordPress 2.8, Web Platform Installer will install URL Rewrite before installing Wordpress so you don't have to. Likewise, Web Platform Installer will make sure that the right stack dependencies like PHP or ASP.NET are installed for the app that needs it.

The Web App Gallery lists customer reviews and other data that you might find interesting. I have seen reviewers of apps list their sites that show the apps in action as a reference point too. I always check out the publisher's site as part of my research process -- all have useful tutorials/docs/videos/etc. to help learn more about the apps.

I just did a demo at an internal Microsoft conference for the MS sales field where I downloaded four different content management systems from Web App Gallery, playing the role of a Web consultant trying to find the right starter app for a small business Web site. I then customized each of the Web apps with a template and a little bit of text...it was amazing to see how quickly I could get a bare bones site up and running with a CMS infrastructure from start (find the app on Web App Gallery) to selection (evaluating which app was the one that worked best for my customer site). As we add more apps to the Web App Gallery, you'll get even more choice. I expect the Content Management category will continue to get the most apps since CMS tends to be the backbone of business sites, but you'll start seeing more in the eCommerce and other categories as our Web App Gallery community expands.

And, of course, both the ASP.NET and PHP open source applications in the Web App Gallery run the best on the IIS7 platform. Our Open Source Lab team here at Microsoft recently published two videos to YouTube that provide a pretty funny take on the entire ASP.NET + PHP app hosting story on IIS. Check them out if you can: "Deployment" and "The Showdown".

Thanks,

Mai-lan

Real World IIS Videocasts for Community ASP.NET and PHP Application Packaging and Deployment

mailant — Mon, 04 May 2009 22:17:00 GMT

I just wrapped up a series of videocasts that target developers and users who want to experience a simplified deployment experience for apps and the Web stack on Windows, focusing particularly on ASP.NET and PHP open source community applications.

For developers

make sure that you have the latest Microsoft Web platform tools (including the Microsoft Web server, applications and frameworks, database and tools, as well as PHP), watch the Staying Current with the Latest Web Platform with Web Platform Installer videocast (7 minutes).
add required Web Deployment tool integration for the Windows Web App Gallery and/or simplify installation on Windows, watch Adding Web Deployment Tool Support to Community Application Zip Packages (12 minutes). This video explains how to add Web Deployment Tool manifest files to a community application zip file (WordPress in this case) for easier deployment on Windows.
find a community application that deploys easily on Windows and learn how to re-package that app with customizations for deployment to a rstrongote IIS7 Web server, see the Packaging and Deploying an Open Source Application Using Web Deployment Tool videocast (11 minutes). This video walks through how to find and customize SilverStripe from the Web App Gallery, then re-package and deploy the customized SilverStripe package using Web Deployment Tool to a remote IIS7 server.

For Windows users

try out the Web Platform Installer, start with the Finding and Installing the Web Platform Installer 2.0 videocast (3 minutes). This video showing the different ways to find and install the Web Platform Installer, as well as provides a brief introduction to the Web Platform Installer Tool.
install a free open source community application easily on Windows, watch the Installing a Free Community Application Using Web Platform Installer videocast (7 minutes). This video shows how to install Umbraco on Windows using the Web Platform Installer.

Technologies discussed

As always, HTTP streaming over IIS brought to you by IIS Smooth Streaming. My next set of videos focuses on IIS7 extensions on the server that make it easier to manage Web apps and their databases, and optimize for search engines. Stay tuned!

Real World IIS: Adding Web Deployment Tool Support to Community Application ZIP Packages (videocast)

mailant — Mon, 04 May 2009 21:31:00 GMT

If you package your application in ZIP format, you can add Web Deployment Tool support to simplify the installation of your application on Windows. Our open source application partners (ASP.NET apps like DotNetNuke and PHP apps like WordPress) add this Web Deployment Tool integration as part of being included in the Windows Web Application Gallery (as defined in the Web App Gallery Principles).

This 12 minute videocast shows you how to:

Start from a WordPress zip package without Web Deployment Tool support from the WordPress community site.
Look at and add manifest.xml, parameters.xml and install.sql files to the WordPress package.
Import the new modified WordPress package using the IIS7 Manager (the new "Manage Packages" action, powered by Web Deployment Tool). This validates that the WordPress app deploys easily and works using the Web Deployment tool integration for the new WordPress package.

HTTP streaming brought to you by IIS Smooth Streaming.

Real World IIS: Staying Current with the Latest Microsoft Web Platform with Web Platform Installer (videocast)

mailant — Sat, 02 May 2009 05:13:00 GMT

If you have been plugged into what has happened across the Microsoft Web Platform in the last two years, you will have noticed a new focus on delivering free Web releases that extend the core functionality of the Microsoft Web stack. We do this all the time in IIS. We build IIS Web extensions on the IIS7 platform (which ships in Windows Server 2008) to open up new capabilities on the Web server across media, request serving, management and administration, and security.

Customers can download our extensions onto IIS7 (and sometimes IIS6) as a free, fully supported product that expands the IIS7 Web server in new directions. Getting new functionality every three to six months on the Web server is a good thing but it can be hard to track when a new release comes out.

The Web Platform Installer helps centralize a single discovery point for the Microsoft Web Platform -- Web server (IIS), application frameworks (ASP.NET and PHP), database (SQL), and tools (Visual Web Developer).

The Web Platform Installer (Web PI) does the work of checking to see what is the latest available across the Microsoft Web Platform against what is already installed on your computer; you can see what is new and what you haven't yet installed. You can use the Web Platform Installer to learn more about different components and install one or more components in a chained installation, with Web PI handling reboots and logging failures where applicable. It's pretty handy. We use WebPI on the product team to set up new servers and desktops for development and/or demo environments.

This short 7 minute video describes how you can use the Web Platform Installer to stay current with the latest in the Microsoft Web Platform.

HTTP streaming brought to you by IIS Smooth Streaming.

Find New IIS7 Extensions at http://www.iis.net/extensions/

bills — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 22:55:00 GMT

I’m happy to announce that IIS7 Extensions have found their home at http://www.iis.net/extensions

Every since IIS7 shipped 9 months ago, the IIS team has been cranking away adding new features to the platform. Last time I blogged about how we do this, I realized we didn’t have a single place to learn about all of them, so I kicked off an effort within the team to create this. Now that the pages are up, it is amazing to see how many new capabilities are already available on top of IIS7…which all by itself had more new features than any other IIS release in the history of the product. It is a testament to not only the ingenuity and hard work of the IIS team, but a real validation that IIS7 is not just a Web server, it is a server platform. All of these new features are built on top of public extensibility points that any developer can use, and provide a seamless runtime, configuration and administration experience that looks and feels like they were built into the product to begin with! Here they are:

Landing page: http://www.iis.net/extensions

http://www.iis.net/AdministrationPack

http://www.iis.net/ApplicationRequestRouting

http://www.iis.net/BitRateThrottling

http://www.iis.net/DatabaseManager

http://www.iis.net/FTP

http://www.iis.net/IISManager

http://www.iis.net/PowerShell

http://www.iis.net/SmoothStreaming

http://www.iis.net/URLRewrite

http://www.iis.net/UrlScan

http://www.iis.net/WebDeploymentTool

http://www.iis.net/WebPlaylists

http://www.iis.net/WebDAV

Check out the more than a dozen new features available today! Over the next few weeks we’ll be adding video demos of each feature and more new content. Stay tuned for many cool new features to come!

IIS7 URL Rewrite Extension is finished – download now!

bills — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 01:04:56 GMT

I’m excited to announce that the IIS7 URL Rewrite extension is finished and available for download. For more information on some last minute features we added, and how to download it, see Ruslan’s blog post here: http://blogs.iis.net/ruslany/archive/2008/11/10/url-rewrite-module-release-to-web.aspx

Many, many, many customers have asked me for URL Rewrite capabilities over the years, and I’m happy to finally provide a high performance, reliable, and fully supported solution from Microsoft. URL Rewrite has many very cool features for Web applications and makes managing URL Rewrite rules easier to create and manage than any other solution out there. If you have IIS7, and you care about having clean URLs that search engines love to index, you need URL Rewrite. Download it today!

Quick Install of the World’s Most Popular Web Applications on IIS7

bills — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 00:48:00 GMT

A few weeks ago I announced the availability of the Microsoft Web Platform Installer (Web PI) in Beta. Web PI makes it easy to obtain and install the Microsoft Web Platform, including IIS, ASP.NET, Visual Web Developer Express, SQL Express and tons of other great IIS and other platform extensions in a single place. The Microsoft Web Platform provides everything you need to develop, deploy, host and operate powerful Web applications.

Speaking of powerful Web applications, today I’m excited to announce another tool that makes installing some of the world’s most popular ASP.NET and PHP applications on IIS7 a snap! The Microsoft Web Application Installer (Web AI) is a companion to Web PI, and provides a super easy way to download, install and configure many popular community and open source applications on IIS7. Available applications include DotNetNuke, Drupal, Gallery, Graffiti, osCommerce, PHPBB, and Wordpress, with more on the way. If you decide to try some of the PHP applications, you may want to check out this recent blog post on how to get PHP and MySQL installed as well. Try out Web AI today!

Web AI downloads each application from its original source, so if the application is updated, you know that Web AI will be pointing to the latest and greatest bits. In addition, Web AI will check for the presence of prerequisite components before installing the application, and after installation, it will offer configuration pages so that you can set up an associated database (another great reason why we included both SQL Server 2008 Express and the SQL Server driver for PHP in Web PI) and if needed, personalize your application by entering credentials and setting application options.

Remember, this is just a beta release, so you can expect to see more functionality and even greater integration as we update this tool in the months to come. And as with Web PI, we have created a Web AI forum where you can discuss Web AI and provide feedback or make suggestions to us, so do let us know what you think.

Community Links 10/11/2008: URL Rewrite, ASP.NET, Extensibility, Diagnostics, WordPress

bills — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 05:01:14 GMT

Here are a few cool links I found today while catching up on my IIS reading:

URL Rewrite

In case you missed it, the IIS7 URL Rewrite extension is now licensed for production use in its final beta release. Deploy it today and get all the benefits from one of the most powerful IIS7 features around. Use it to clean up URLs, provide extension-less URLs, fix canonicalization issues with your site to improve search ranking, redirect incoming users and much, much more. This latest URL Rewrite release includes all new IIS Manager support for creating rewrite rules using templates, rule testing and more. Speaking of the URL Rewrite extension, check out these community links:

CarlosAg wrote a really awesome post on how to make your IIS7 site search engine friendly (SEO) with IIS7 URL Rewriter. Barry Wise, who has written a lot about SEO, did a follow-up post on the topic for IIS
Scott Hanselman writes about URL Rewriter as well on how he uses it to improve canonicalization including a scenario with ASP.NET MVC to remove trailing backslashes.
One of the powerful new features of this URL Rewrite release is the support for URL Rewrite templates. Check out Daniel’s post on how to extend the URL Rewrite Template support
RuslanY posted a walkthrough video of the URL Rewrite extension in action.
If you’re looking for a URL rewrite solution for IIS5/6/7, check out Helicon Tech’s isapiRewrite solution

ASP.NET

The ASP.NET team announced MVC Preview 5 of the new ASP.NET MVC Framework. Download the link on codeplex.
Also in the news, jQuery will now ship with with Visual Studio! This makes adding slick browser animations to ASP.NET applications a cinch.
ScottGu links to a bunch of related community links on the MVC and jQuery news in his recent blog post.
I’ve seen a lot of ASP.NET developers use wildcard script-mapping with IIS 6.0. As they move to IIS7, questions pop-up about whether *scriptmap is still supported, and how it relates to the new IIS7 integrated pipeline which allows .NET modules and handlers to run natively inside IIS’ core HTTP processing engine. RuslanY wrote an excellent article on this topic titled, wildcard script mapping and IIS 7 integrated pipeline

Misc

Tobin posted the source code up on codeplex for his very popular IIS7 logging UI which he released for Vista RTM (Vista SP1 now includes logging UI support by default). This is a good example of how to build UI extensions for IIS Manager
Tess wrote an in-depth post on how to diagnose performance issues using Failed Request Tracing and AppCmd.
TrainSignalTraining wrote a nice tutorial series on how to install WordPress on IIS7 in two parts (part 1, part2)