Quick Fix Blog



Installing PHP 5 on IIS

Sunday 23rd March 2008 12:59 PM

This was frustrating to say the least, setting up a web server for an experimental site; I wanted to use Windows Server and IIS and also needed PHP.

The Windows Server is pretty much straight forward stuff, point, shoot, work.

When I went to download PHP I found that I had a choice, either download PHP in a ZIP file and do it all manually or download a wondefull installer.

Now I'm not really a lazy person by nature but at 39 years old and some would say a little bit slower at tying things together than I use to be I figured what the heck, give me a nice installer any day.

The installer does a great job, integrates in to IIS, registers in all the right places but wait a minute, my PHP doesn't work on my web page....

No errors, no nothing, just 404 page not found... how annoying.

The fix... simple but even more annoying than the problem was....

Windows filenames and that darn habit of replacing long filenames with abcdef~1.dll

In this case, if you go in to IIS manager and right-click your website - go to properties and then the Home Directory Tab, select Configuration and under the Application extensions you should see that the installer did a great job of putting you a .php extension with the Executable Path stripped to C:\PROGRA~1\PHP\PHP5IS~1.DLL

Now for some reason this doesn't work, so replace it with the full naming enclosed in speech marks i.e. "C:\Program Files\PHP\php5isapi.dll" and whoala... all working.

Don't forget to stop and start your web site before testing.

The rule, the PHP installer does do a great job, and it is free of charge, but don't always rely on installers to give you an easy ride.

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Comments

Worked a treat, thanks

Posted by Jo , on Friday 18th April 2008, 10:05 AM


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