PHPWCMS on IIS

by Eric Woersching

Introduction

PHPWCMS is a web content management system optimized for fast and easy setup and works on any standard web server. PHPWCMS is perfect for professional, public and private users. It is very easy to learn and provides the flexibility to separate layout and content

For more information about PHPWCMS, see http://www.phpwcms.com/.

In this section, we go through the steps required to install PHPWCMS to work with the FastCGI extension on IIS 7.0 and above. To find out more about FastCGI support in IIS, see https://www.iis.net/fastcgi.

The following steps assume that you have completed the setup and configuration of FastCGI extension and PHP libraries as described here https://www.iis.net/fastcgi/phpon60.

Download and Unpack PHPWCMS

First, download the latest stable release of PHPWCMS application. For this article, we use the phpwcms_1.3.3. Full Package downloaded from the mirror http://sourceforge.net/projects/phpwcms/.

Once you download the package, uncompress it and copy files and folders to C:\Inetpub\wwwroot\phpwcms.
For installation help, see http://www.phpwcms.org/.

Set Up the Database

Before starting the installation procedure for PHPWCMS, create a database on your server. Also create a user and grant this user db ownership permission to the database. Follow the instructions in the Setting Up a Database for a PHP Application on IIS article for a MySQL database. This walkthrough uses the following database information:

  • Database Name: 'phpwcms'
  • Database User: 'phpwcmsuser'
  • Account Password: 'phpwcms'

Set Up and Configure PHPWMCS

  1. Provide "All" permissions to the IIS user for the files and folders located in the PHPWCMS directory.

    • upload
    • filearchive
    • filearchive/can_be_deleted
    • template
    • content
    • content/ads
    • content/images
    • content/gt
    • content/form
    • content/rss
    • content/tmp
    • content/pages
  2. Provide "Read&Write" permissions to the IIS user for the files and folders located in the PHPWCMS directory.

    • setup/setup.conf.inc.php

    • template/inc_css/frontend.css

    • config/phpwcms/conf.indexpage.inc.php

    • template/inc_default/startup.php

      Screenshot of the Permissions for upload dialog with all Permisions allowed for the I I S underscore I U S R S Group.

  3. Call the install script in your browser via the following path: http://localhost/phpwcms/setup/index.php.

    Screenshot of the welcome message with the General Public License terms.

    Installation starts with the welcome message.

  4. Click "I Agree the GPL, Continue…" to continue to the installation after reading the license.

    Screenshot of the available server configurations after agreeing to the General Public License.

    The system reports the available server configuration.

    • If the register_globals is set to on, then set it to off by editing the PHP.ini file located in the PHP folder.
    • Set safe_mode to off in the PHP.ini file to avoid security risks.
  5. After the configuration confirmation, click "Start setup PHPWCMS" to start the setup.

    Screenshot of configuring the My S Q L database and collation settings after clicking Start Setup P H P W C M S.

  6. Enter the database details created for the PHPWCMS application above and click "Continue".

  7. Confirm the Char set options required. We select default options for our application.

    Screenshot of selecting the default database schema.

  8. Confirm the table creation by selecting the check box to create PHPWCMS tables and click Continue.

    Screenshot of creating the specified P H P W C M S tables.

  9. Take the table creation backup for future use and click Continue.

    Screenshot after taking the table creation backup.

  10. After getting the table creation confirmation, click Continue. Enter the admin user details and click Continue.

    Screenshot of the admin user details in the Path settings.

    Screenshot of the P H P W C M S path settings before clicking send path values.

  11. Confirm the folder settings by clicking "send path values". We need not change any information here, as all folders already exist in the application.

    Screenshot of the confirmation page with any problems that may exist before starting P H P W C M S.

  12. Download conf.inc.php from the Download the created config file* link and save it to your hard disk. Then move that file to the config\phpwcms\ folder.

  13. The system confirms the folder permissions and confirms the installation completion. Delete the setup folder after this installation.

  14. Press LOGIN in the upper right corner and login with your username and password created.

    Screenshot of the login page with the admin login credentials.

    This takes you to the home screen.

    Screenshot of the home screen after logging in.

Getting More Information

To discuss the FastCGI support in IIS, or file bug reports, use the FastCGI forums:

To get more information regarding running various PHP applications on IIS, refer to: