pMachinePro on IIS
by Eric Woersching
Introduction
The application pMachine Pro is a popular open source blogging solution. It includes all the features of traditional blog tools, and supports multiple languages. ExpressionEngine has replaced it. The existing pMachine Pro is still available for free download, but it is no longer supported.
For more information about pMachine Pro, see http://www.ellislab.com/.
The following sections describe how to install and configure pMachinePro for use with FastCGI on IIS 6.0. This document assumes that you have completed the setup and configuration of the FastCGI extension and PHP libraries as described in https://www.iis.net/fastcgi/phpon60.
Notes on PHP Setup
pMachine Pro does not require many modifications beyond the default configuration provided by PHP. From the base configuration file provided by PHP, you only need to modify the following lines in your php.ini configuration file to get pMachine Pro working:
- Define
extension\_dir
asc:\php\ext
(i.e., the location of your PHP extensions directory) - Uncomment
extension=php\_mysql.dll
in the extensions list to enable MySQL support
Download and Unpack pMachinePro
First, download the latest stable release of pMachine Pro. For this article, we use pMachine Pro 2.4.1 downloaded from here <ISSUE: Missing link>. Once you download the package, uncompress it and copy all the files and folders to C:\Inetpub\wwwroot\pMachine
.
Set Up the Database
Before starting the installation procedure for pMachinePro, 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: 'pmachine'
- Database User: 'pmachine'
- Account Password: 'pmachine'
Set Up and Configure pMachinePro
To ensure that the Installation process can complete without errors, follow the instructions to set the file and directory permissions described in the installation document contained in the package. For this walkthrough, we provide modify permissions to the local machine "Internet Guest Account" for the following directories and file:
- /images/uploads
- /images/captchas
- /pm/config.php
Change the database connection setting in the config.php file to point to your installed MySQL instance.
Browse to the http://localhost/pMachine/pm/install.php
page for detailed setup instructions. Click the Install link on the top of the page to redirect to the Install Wizard.
The data population SQL scripts in the install.php are out of sync with the actual table schema created in MySQL 5.0.45. You must update the insert scripts contained in install.php, and in template.data.php.
This results in creating all the tables and you see the registration form to register the admin user.
Test pMachinePro
To test that pMachine has been installed successfully, create a blog postings and view it as a site visitor would. Follow these steps:
Navigate to
http://localhost/pMachine/pm/index.php
.Enter the administrator username and password created in the last installation step.
Once logged in, enter a title for your post and some content and click Preview. This displays what the post looks like.
Click Submit to publish this content to the Blog selected (Blog A in the case above).
Navigate to
http://localhost/pmachine/weblog.php
to browse to the actual blog site. See the actual blog as seen by site visitors.
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:
Feedback
https://aka.ms/ContentUserFeedback.
Coming soon: Throughout 2024 we will be phasing out GitHub Issues as the feedback mechanism for content and replacing it with a new feedback system. For more information see:Submit and view feedback for