Create a file called rewritemaps.config in the same directory where web.config file is. Open that file in notepad and add the following:

<rewriteMaps>
  <rewriteMap name="Redirects">
    <add key="/oldurl" value="/newurl" />
    <add key="/otheroldurl" value="/othernewurl" />
  </rewriteMap>
</rewriteMaps>

Save this file and then open web.config file in notepad. In the web.config file add the following inside of the <rewrite> section:

<rewriteMaps configSource="rewritemaps.config" />

The configSource attribute tells IIS configuration that the <rewriteMaps> section is defined in a separate file rewritemaps.config. This referenced section can be now uses as if it was defined in the same web.config file. Also, the IIS Manager UI will work well with this referenced file: when you modify or add entries to the rewrite map they will be stored in the rewritemaps.config file.

Here is a complete example web.config file that uses the rewrite map from referenced configuration file:

<configuration>
<system.webServer>
  <rewrite>
    <rewriteMaps configSource="rewritemaps.config"><rewriteMaps>
    <rules>
      <rule name="Redirect rule1 for Redirects">
        <match url=".*" />
        <conditions>
          <add input="{Redirects:{REQUEST_URI}}" pattern="(.+)" />
        </conditions>
        <action type="Redirect" url="{C:1}" appendQueryString="false" />
      </rule>
    </rules>
  </rewrite>
</system.webServer>
</configuration>

The same approach can be used for storing rewrite rules in a separate configuration file, e.g.:

<rules configSource="rewriteRules.config" />

VS IntelliSense for URL Rewrite 2.0

Disclaimer: The schema file and the helper script file contained in this package are provided by me and not by Microsoft. The are not officially supported by Microsoft. Use them at your own risk.

Follow the same instructions as in Visual Studio XML IntelliSense for URL Rewrite 1.1 to add the schema to the Visual Studio schema cache. If after following the instructions the IntelliSense does not work then follow the instructions at Not getting IntelliSense in your web.config for system.webServer sections in Visual Studio 2008?.

The rewrite rules are not time-aware, but it is relatively easy to add the time-dependent functionality by using URL Rewrite 2.0 extensibility. Follow the steps below to add a scheduler rewrite provider for URL Rewrite module.

Step 1: Download the provider source code and compiled .NET assembly from the link below and unpack it into some temporary location:

RewriteScheduler provider for URL Rewrite 2.0

Disclaimer: The code and the .NET assembly contained in this package are provided by me and not by Microsoft. The are not officially supported by Microsoft. Use them at your own risk.

Step 2: Add the .NET assembly to the Global Assembly Cache by using this command:

gacutil.exe /if C:\Some\Temporary\Location\RewriteScheduler.dll 

Step 3: Register the provider instance with URL Rewrite module. In this example the provider instance will be used to specify the day time hours.

Step 4: Configure the time ranges when the scheduler is active. Specify multiple comma-separated time ranges by using 24 hour format.

Step 5: Repeat steps 3 and 4 to register another provider instance that is used to specify night time hours:

Now you can create rewrite rules that perform different actions based on the time of day. For example to serve different pages depending on whether it is day or night use the following rules:

<rule name="Day-time rewrite" patternSyntax="Wildcard">
  <match url="page.html" />
  <conditions>
    <add input="{DayTimeScheduler:void}" pattern="ON" />
  </conditions>
  <action type="Rewrite" url="page.day.html" />
</rule>
<rule name="Night-time rewrite" patternSyntax="Wildcard">
  <match url="page.html" />
  <action type="Rewrite" url="page.night.html" />
</rule>

To take the site offline during the night time use the following rule:

<rule name="Site offline overnight" patternSyntax="Wildcard" stopProcessing="true">
  <match url="*" />
  <conditions>
    <add input="{NightTimeScheduler:void}" pattern="ON" />
  </conditions>
  <action type="CustomResponse" statusCode="503"
                         statusReason="Site is offline"
                         statusDescription="Site is temporarily offline" />
</rule>

• Express complex URL rewriting logic by using custom rewrite providers written in .NET.
• Replace the URLs generated by a web application in the response HTML with a more user friendly and search engine friendly equivalent
• Fix up the content of any HTTP response by using regular expression pattern matching.
• Modify HTTP request and response headers and IIS server variables.

For the complete list of features available in this version, refer to Using URL Rewrite Module 2.0.

Install the URL Rewrite 2.0 – RTW

To install the URL Rewrite 2.0, use the download links at the module’s home page at http://www.iis.net/expand/urlrewrite. Note that this is a final, production ready release that is officially supported by Microsoft.

Upgrade notes:

• If a previous version of URL Rewrite Module, such as v1.0 and v1.1, is already installed then it will be upgraded to the v2.0;
• If an RC version of the URL Rewrite Module 2.0 is already installed, then it will be upgraded to RTW version.

Install the URL Rewrite Extensibility Samples

An important new feature in this release is the support for custom rewrite providers that can be written in .NET. Custom rewrite providers can be used to implement complex rewrite logic which cannot be expressed by using built-in rewriting functionality.

The URL Rewrite Extensibility Samples include the .NET assemblies and the source code implementing the following providers:

• DbProvider – this provider can be used to retrieve rewrite mappings from a SQL Server database table by executing a stored procedure;
• FileMapProvider – this provider can be used to retrieve rewrite mappings stored in a text file;
• FileContainsProvider – this provider can be used to check if any string in a text file is a substring of the provider’s input string.

Download the URL Rewrite Extensibility Samples from MSDN Code Gallery.

More Information

The following documentation about URL Rewrite 2.0 is available on IIS.net:

• Using Custom Rewrite Providers with URL Rewrite Module
• Developing a Custom Rewrite Provider for URL Rewrite Module
• Creating Outbound Rules for URL Rewrite Module
• Reverse Proxy with URL Rewrite 2.0 and Application Request Routing
• Using Outbound Rules to insert Web Analytics Tracking Code
• Setting HTTP Request Headers and Server Variables
• Modifying HTTP Response Headers
• SEO Rule Templates
• User Friendly URL – rule template
• Reverse Proxy – Rule Template
• URL Rewrite Module v2.0 configuration reference

Also, visit the URL Rewrite Forum on IIS.NET if you have run into any problems when using the module or have questions or suggestions.

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 matching.
• Modify HTTP request headers and IIS server variables.
• Modify HTTP response headers

Install the URL Rewrite Module 2.0 – RC

To install the URL Rewrite Module 2.0 – RC, use the download links at the module’s home page at http://www.iis.net/extensions/urlrewrite.

Note:

• If a previous version of URL Rewrite Module, such as v1.0 and v1.1, is already installed then it will be upgraded to the v2.0 RC
• If a beta version of the URL Rewrite Module 2.0 is already installed, then it has to be uninstalled before installing v2.0 RC.

Changes since the beta release

Here are the new features and changes that were added to the module in the RC release. For the complete list of the URL Rewrite 2.0 features refer to Using URL Rewrite Module 2.0.

• Rewriting of HTTP response headers. Outbound rewrite rules can be used modify any existing HTTP response headers or to set new ones.
• Logging of rewritten URLs. The rewrite rules can be configured to log the rewritten URL in IIS W3C logs as opposed to logging an originally requested URL.
• Evaluating HTTP response headers from rewrite rules. The rewrite rules now can access and evaluate the values in the HTTP response headers.
• Allow list for server variables. To prevent distributed rewrite rules from accidentally or purposefully modifying IIS server variables that may affect security or runtime behavior of a web application the modifiable server variables now have to be explicitly added to the allow list.
• HtmlEncode function. Outbound rewrite may often use an un-trusted data (e.g. query string or HTTP headers) to build a replacement string to insert into the HTTP response. In those cases the HtmlEncode function should be used to prevent insertion of client-side scripts into the response, which could result in cross-site scripting vulnerability.
• Updated user interface in IIS Manager. The user interface has been significantly improved to better represent the module configuration and to simplify such common tasks as configuring of rewrite rules and rewrite conditions.
  

Documentation:

• Using URL Rewrite Module 2.0
• Creating Outbound Rewrite Rules for URL Rewrite Module
• Reverse Proxy with URL Rewrite and Application Request Routing
• Setting HTTP Request Headers and IIS Server Variables
• Modifying HTTP Response Headers
• Using Outbound Rules to Add Web Analytics Tracking Code
• URL Rewrite Module 2.0 – Configuration Reference

Support

• URL Rewrite Forum

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” or to use the IIS URL Rewrite Module.

Configuring IIS Handler Mapping

PHP executable supports a command line argument “-s” which is used to display color syntax highlighted source code of any PHP script. You can create a handler mapping for “*.phps” and use “C:\[path to PHP installation]\php-cgi.exe|-s” as the executable, e.g.:

After that you will need to rename or copy the .php file to .phps file and then request it from a web browser.

Using IIS URL Rewrite Module

If you do not want to rename each .php file to .phps, you can use IIS URL Rewrite rule and a simple PHP script (as suggested by Pierre Joye). In the root directory of your web site create a file called highlighter.php and put the following code inside:

<?php
if ( isset( $_GET['file'] ) ) {
  $file = filter_input( INPUT_GET, 'file', FILTER_SANITIZE_SPECIAL_CHARS, FILTER_FLAG_STRIP_HIGH );
  highlight_file( $file );
}
?>

After that add the following rewrite rule to the web.config file located at the root directory of your web site:

<rewrite>
<rules>
  <rule name="PHP Source Code" stopProcessing="true">
   <match url="(.*\.php)s$" />
   <conditions>
    <add input="{DOCUMENT_ROOT}\{R:1}" matchType="IsFile" />
   </conditions>
   <action type="Rewrite" url="highlighter.php?file={R:1}" appendQueryString="false" />
  </rule>
</rules>
</rewrite>

Now, if you request any url that has an extension .phps the highlighted source code will be returned in the response, provided that the corresponding .php file exists under the web site’s root directory.

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. The are not officially supported by Microsoft. Use them at your own risk.

Step 2: Extract the content of the file to a directory of your choice, for example C:\rewrite_vsintellisense\

Step 3: Start the elevated privilege command line window by typing “cmd” in the search bar of the Windows Start Menu and then right clicking the “cmd” item in the search result and selecting “Run As Administrator”.

Step 4: In the command line window type the following:

cd \rewrite_intellisense

Replace the path if you unpacked the files into a different location

cscript UpdateSchemaCache.js

You should see the output as below:

Check that the XML IntelliSense in Visual Studio XML editor works now:

In case you want to restore back the original XML schema used by Visual Studio, here is how you can do it:

cd “%ProgramFiles%\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\Xml\Schemas"
move DotNetConfig_beforeRewrite.xsd DotNetConfig.xsd

• 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 be installed side-by-side.
• URL Rewrite v1.1 and v2.0 cannot be installed side-by-side.
• If URL Rewrite v1.0 or v1.0 is already installed, uninstall it before proceeding with installing URL Rewrite Module v2.0 Beta.

New Features

URL Rewrite Module 2.0 includes the following key features:

• Rules-based response rewriting engine. Outbound rules are used to express the logic of what to compare parts of the response with and what to do if comparison was successful. Web server and site administrators can use outbound rules to define complex response rewriting logic.
• Rewriting within the content of specific HTML tags. Instead of scanning the entire response for a particular match, the rule can be configured to look only inside of certain HTML tags, such as <a>, <img>, etc. That way the pattern is greatly simplified and the process of applying the rule to the content is much faster comparing to applying the pattern to the entire response.
• Pre-conditions for outbound rules. Applying rewrite rules on every response is an expensive operation and is not necessary in majority of the cases. Pre-conditions are used to check the response metadata to determine if outbound rules evaluation should be applied.
• Setting of server variables and HTTP headers. Various IIS server variables and HTTP request headers can be set by using rewrite rules.
• Tracking capture groups across rule conditions. The conditions back-referencing logic in URL Rewrite 1.1 worked only against the last matched conditions. In v2 it is possible to configure back-referencing logic to work against all matched conditions.
• Logging of rewritten URLs. The module can be configured to log the rewritten URL in IIS W3C logs as opposed to logging an originally requested URL.

More information

Use the following links to get more information about URL Rewrite Module 2.0 Beta:

• URL Rewrite Module 2.0 usage walkthroughs
• URL Rewrite Module 2.0 configuration reference

Also, be sure to visit the URL Rewrite Forum on IIS.NET if you have run into any problems when using the module or have questions or suggestions.

• 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 IIS 7 URL Rewrite Module. Refer to IIS 7 URL Rewrite Module support in WordPress 2.8 for more details.

Overall, the upgrade went pretty smoothly and the only thing that was different from the usual process of setting up PHP on Windows was the date.timezone setting in php.ini file. Starting with PHP 5.3, this setting must be explicitly set, e.g.:

date.timezone = America/Los_Angeles

After this successful upgrade I guess it is time now “to reward myself by reading that book or an article that I’ve been putting off, or simply sitting back for a few moments and let the world pass me by”.

Have you tried upgrading to PHP 5.3 on IIS recently? What was your experience?

Here is how the process of updating Permalinks structure will look like in WordPress 2.8 on IIS 7:

1. Go to Settings –> Permalinks page and choose the permalink structure that you prefer:
   
2. 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:
   
3. Now you can copy the the given XML and put it into the web.config file inside of /<configuration>/<system.webServer>/<rewrite>/<rules> element and that’s it!
4. Alternatively – instead of manually editing the web.config file you can have WordPress to update it automatically for you. To do that, temporarily grant WordPress write access to web.config file and click on “Save Changes” again. WordPress will add its rewrite rule into the proper location inside of the web.config file. Do not forget to revert the write permission on web.config file after the rule has been saved.

If you want to try this functionality, as well as all the other new features in the upcoming WordPress 2.8 release, you can download the latest nightly build. Also, pretty soon the 2.8 beta will be available.

Thanks to the WordPress development community for adding this functionality! Specifically, big thanks to peaceablewhale, Denis-de-Bernardy, hakre, sivel and ryan for directly working on the patch and contributing to it in many different ways: testing, code reviewing, cleaning up the code and checking it in.