Category: FastCGI

PHP on Windows loads its configuration file php.ini during the startup of the process php-cgi.exe. When PHP is run on IIS via FastCGI the php-cgi.exe processes are re-used to handle many requests. If configuration settings in php.ini file get updated, those changes will not be picked up by php-cgi.exe processes until the processes are recycled or restarted by IIS FastCGI module. This means that any time you change the PHP configuration you have to manually recycle IIS Application Pools that use PHP. This post explains how to configure FastCGI in IIS so that PHP configuration changes take effect right away without the need to manually recycle or restart the IIS Application Pools.

This post describes how to configure IIS to support multiple versions of PHP on the same server. This kind of setup is useful in development environments where it is necessary to test an application with different PHP versions. Also, it is often used in production environments, where many PHP applications are hosted on the same server and some of them have dependency on a particular PHP version.

In order to setup multiple versions of PHP side by side on the same IIS server it is necessary to install PHP manually by following the steps described in php.net documentation for IIS 5.1 and IIS 6.0 and for IIS 7.0 and later. Do not use PHP Windows installer because it does not support side by side installations.

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, such as how to install PHP on Windows with PHP Installer, how to easily upgrade to PHP 5.3, how to run multiple PHP versions side by side, etc. If you have any suggestions on the updated content or if you have any additional instructions that you think will be useful, please submit user notes on PHP.NET.

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.