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Yarin
Asked: 2011-03-26 11:31:04 +0800 CST

Potential Issues Using WordPress on WIMP and WAMP?

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The firm I'm working with want to host WordPress on Windows servers. They also want to use WIMP instead of WAMP. I don't like the idea, but can't explain intelligently why it's bad- Can someone help me?

What are the potential issues hosting WordPress on WIMP? WAMP? Windows in general?

This may be too broad to cover comprehensively, but if there are some fundamental known issues I'd like to hear about them.

Thanks-

EDIT: Some things that come to mind...

  1. No mod-rewrite in IIS, so are permalinks a problem?
iis wordpress

3 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    Wordpress works fine on IIS, with a little configuration. I've set up a couple WP sites on IIS and Apache on Windows and haven't noticed much of a performance difference, though the sites weren't particularly high-traffic.

    Take a look at the guide here, which should give you a good starting point: http://learn.iis.net/page.aspx/280/install-wordpress-on-iis/

    Edit For your Edit:

    On IIS7, you can use URL Rewrite to handle pretty permalinks. In IIS 6, you'll have to use ISAPI_Rewrite. I'd suggest using IIS7, though.

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  2. Speaking as a web hoster (providing both Linux and Windows hosting), we host hundreds of WordPress sites on IIS6 and II7 with virtually no problems at all.

    One drawback on IIS6 is that if you're after pretty permalinks then you'll need some kind of rewriter installed (ISAPI_Rewrite, Iconic's IIRF) or do something clever with a 404 error handler if they allow you to modify custom error pages.

    On IIS7 pretty permalinks ought not to be an issue because the host should have installed IIS UrlRewrite. In fact, out of the box, the most recent versions of WordPress actually detect IIS7 and create a rewrite rule you can drop into the site's web.config at install time.

    I'd go so far as to say that WordPress is probably the most popular application we see hosted on Windows.

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  3. You have to speak their language and show them why WAMP wins over WIMP...

    1. PHP has been supported and used primarily by Apache for over a decade. PHP on IIS is relatively new, and only secondary (focus is on ASP.NET).

    2. The officially reported stats for Apache, MySQL, and PHP show that the Windows packages of these are responsible for the majority of the downloads and installs (AMP became more widely used on Windows than on Linux before 2009).

    3. There are commercial packages, with support provided, available for Apache, PHP, and MySQL on Windows. Such as WampDeveloper.

    4. WordPress is developed and tested using Apache and PHP first and formost, not IIS. You'll be able to find more information and help running WP on Apache rather than IIS.

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