Drupal on IIS 6?

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Posted by ngstigator on February 15, 2011 at 12:15am

Apparently it is easier to run Drupal on IIS, but I want to hear your stories, good and bad!

Cheers,

Chris

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Comments

For the most part, it's not all bad

Posted by petethedude on February 15, 2011 at 12:23am

I've setup a number of Drupal sites under IIS and for the most part, it's not too bad. The biggest problem I ran into is that Clean URLs are a little more work to get working properly on IIS versus Apache.

But for the most part, IIS handles Drupal just fine... most of the time.

We ended up using Helicon's ISAPI_Rewrite 3 to get them working on several IIS served websites.
http://www.helicontech.com/cms_articles/drupal.htm

Thanks for the heads up. Are

Posted by ngstigator on February 15, 2011 at 12:46am

Thanks for the heads up. Are you using IIS 6? Any other specific problems that you've had to overcome?

Yeah, we're running IIS6 on

Posted by petethedude on February 15, 2011 at 4:48pm

Yeah, we're running IIS6 on our Windows server. We also had problems with getting PECL upload progress bar to work for the FileField module. It wasn't the end of the world, but having an upload progress bar for user submitted content would have been nice. Also, although not an IIS issue, if you're into using the goodness that is drush to speed up your dev process and update your sites, a Windows dev environment is shaky at best.

Drush on Windows

Posted by markjbrown (not verified) on February 16, 2011 at 3:05am
markjbrown's picture

Yeah, we're working on this with Drush on Windows. Had a chat with Moshe back at DrupalCon CPH about this.

We're exploring some options here and hopefully will get to work on either submitting a patch to Drush or maybe exploring other options such as Drush built using PowerShell.

Stay tuned.

Another rewrite tool

Posted by kiwimind on February 15, 2011 at 9:35am

We've successfully got the Ionic's Isapi Rewrite Filter working fine on IIS6, on both standalone and multisite installations.
http://iirf.codeplex.com/

Easier than what? Harvesting

Posted by sonictruth on February 15, 2011 at 12:41am

Easier than what? Harvesting chicken teeth?

No problems

Posted by chicagomom on February 15, 2011 at 1:09am

I've been running several standalone and multi-sites on IIS7, and it's been mostly problem-free from the server side of things. Performance has been comparable to *nix servers. The biggest issue I've had is finding documentation for common issues (hence this group). That's changing though as more people use Drupal on IIS.

chicagomom on Twitter and d.o.

That is certainly great news!

Posted by ngstigator on February 15, 2011 at 1:53am

That is certainly great news! I haven't used IIS since W2k and it's good to know that things have really progressed since then. Reading lots of good things about IIS7+. Getting my hands dirty after booting into Win7 to try things out.

Grateful for this group!

Multi-Site on IIS 7.5

Posted by teekath on April 12, 2011 at 11:51pm

Hi chicagomom,

I have migrated my site recently from WAMP to IIS 7.5 and it is working fine but my database is getting big and would like to separate my sections and convert them to a multi-site. You have mentioned that you have been working on multi-sites and would like to seek for your help.

I have followed the instructions on this node http://drupal.org/node/215549 but when I launch my site after creating the virtual directory, I get a HTTP Error 403.14 - Forbidden. I changed permissions on the site but still gets the same error. Will you be able to give me some instructions on how you configured your multi-site and also how I can make this work.

Any help will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Kat

@chris_five: I can't tell if

Posted by pkiff on February 15, 2011 at 2:08am

@chris_five: I can't tell if you are going to be running on IIS 6 or IIS 7+.

We're running a multisite Drupal 6 setup that started on IIS 5 and moved to IIS 7. There is a big difference in compatibility with Drupal between IIS 5 and 7+. In general, folks who were running IIS 5 and IIS 6 had to fiddle with more settings and sometimes even had to hack core in order to get everything working correctly. But IIS 7+ runs Drupal well with a minimum of fuss.

Also, IIS 7+ has better tools for setting up and optimizing PHP, which can make a big difference.

Under IIS 5, we used Helicon's ISAPI_Rewrite to get clean URLs. And there was one particularly annoying bug that required editing Drupal core (see Login, cookie, session problems on 6.x under IIS 5 - Solution safe?). I'm not sure, but I had the impression that that bug still existed under IIS 6 -- or at least it still appeared under certain circumstances. None of that stuff is necessary under IIS 7+.

Phil.

Definitely recommend IIS7

Posted by markjbrown (not verified) on February 15, 2011 at 3:27am
markjbrown's picture

We basically rewrote IIS when we did IIS7. Supports clean URL's natively. Much better php stability and performance with FastCGI which now has a dynamic PHP app pool size when you set the app pool size to zero. WinCache extension for PHP also improves performance with an opcode, file, path and session cache for PHP apps. We also have a PHP Manager in IIS which is handy to troubleshoot PHP issues, change ini settings and also change which version of PHP you are using. I also strongly recommend using PHP 5.3.x than anything earlier. 5.3 was largely rewritten against native Win32 and the binaries are compiled using VC9 instead of VC6 which is a ten year old compiler now. You can get all this stuff from our Web Platform Installer

Finally of course there is Drupal 7 which can run on SQL Server or SQL Express which is free. You can try an install profile Commerce Guys created on that page you referred to above on Microsoft's website.

There are two ways you can do Drupal development on Windows. Using IIS locally or using WebMatrix. If you want to do Drupal on a full version of IIS then I would install our Web Platform Installer (http://web.ms/download). Open it, select options and make sure IIS is checked in the dialog.

If you want to do WebMatrix just install Drupal from that page above, (http://web.ms/drupal) and it will install WebMatrix, then whichever version of Drupal you select. The best part about WebMatrix is that deploying it to a hosted instance of Windows is pretty simple. Just sign up for hosting, save the settings file they email you, then in WebMatrix select Publish, Settings then import the file to autopopulate all your publish settings.

Anyway, long enough response. enjoy Drupal on IIS.

Looks like IIS7 or bust.

Posted by ngstigator on February 15, 2011 at 10:41pm

Looks like IIS7 or bust. Client has a box which is running IIS6 but I think it's best to upgrade or get another server (everything is hosted internally and their admins are only fluent in Windows).

Thanks so much for your posts!

Chris

One more thing

Posted by markjbrown (not verified) on February 16, 2011 at 3:12am
markjbrown's picture

btw, since most of you on here are using Drupal on Windows or are thinking about it, we have a partner program for people who build websites and it has some pretty cool benefits including production licenses for Windows Server 2008, SQL Server 2008 and our tooling like Visual Studio and Expression.

I hear lots of people say they can't afford themselves or their customers can't afford to upgrade. This program (WebsiteSpark) might be helpful to explore because you can either transfer these production licenses for Windows Server, etc. to a hosting partner in our program (Virtual or dedicated hosting only), or use them to upgrade your own servers. The only strings in this program is you have to deploy a new site on Windows and IIS but for most of you that's what you're doing anyway so not much of a hurdle.

If you're interested in learning more you can learn more here, www.websitespark.com

Regards,

URL rewrite on IIS 7

Posted by MrPhilbert on February 16, 2011 at 4:11pm

The URL rewrite module for IIS 7 and 7.5 is a terrific tool. I would definately use this tool to create your web config file.
The web config file that comes with Drupal includes a 401 redirect which I don't recommend using with Drupal 7 (use the site configuration in Drupal instead).

To create a rewrite rule just follow these steps:
1. While on the main site page for your Drupal site in IIS, double click on the url rewrite module.
2. Click the uppper right button to import rule. This will open a file browser.
3. Navigate to the .htaccess file in your Drupal root and click OK. This will import the rules from this file and convert them to rewrite rules in a new (or existing) web.config file.
4. There will be 2 rules that are highlited in red that don't apply. Just remove them and click apply.

Now during install Drupal will recognize that url rewrite is available or (if installed already) you can now enable url rewrite.
Mr. Philbert
www.siteperspectives.com

This is a good step-by-step

Posted by ngstigator on February 16, 2011 at 7:38pm

This is a good step-by-step tutorial. Thank you.

Easier?

Posted by minghui.yu on March 3, 2011 at 10:32pm

I don't think so, honestly.

I cannot get the image upload feature to work in my drupal websites running on IIS6. Here is the message I get:
'The file filename.jpg could not be saved. An unknown error has occurred.
The file in the Image field was unable to be uploaded.'
Can someone help me please?

Google suggests this:

Posted by CatherineOmega on April 15, 2013 at 6:37pm

Just curious if you are

Posted by panmanphil on April 16, 2013 at 12:02pm

Just curious if you are running your root somewhere other than on the c: drive? I have no experience with IIS 6, and you don't mention which drupal version you are using, but with IIS 7 and Drupal 7 the issues I ran into with upload are permissions, requirement to be on c:, inability to use network drives ( to upload in a load balanced situation) and confusion about the private temp vs standard upload directory.

Check permissions on the

Posted by beanjammin on April 15, 2013 at 6:34pm

Check permissions on the directory you are uploading to - admin/reports/status should show if they are set correctly or not.

still does not work

Posted by tboyd@commplus.ca on April 16, 2013 at 11:26am

thanks Catherine and Ben for your suggestions. Unfortunately, neither has solved the problem. The Status Report in the Drupal site does not show any errors. So, at least on the surface, looks like the directory permissions are correct. I am beginning to think it has something to do with the Windows user account for anonymous access. The reason why I say that is that if I remove this permission from the site and run the site from a subdirectory of the root, it works. However, as soon as I put the anonymous access back in and run the site from the root, it does not work.

thanks Catherine and Ben for

Posted by tboyd@commplus.ca on April 16, 2013 at 11:26am

thanks Catherine and Ben for your suggestions. Unfortunately, neither has solved the problem. The Status Report in the Drupal site does not show any errors. So, at least on the surface, looks like the directory permissions are correct. I am beginning to think it has something to do with the Windows user account for anonymous access. The reason why I say that is that if I remove this permission from the site and run the site from a subdirectory of the root, it works. However, as soon as I put the anonymous access back in and run the site from the root, it does not work.

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