How To Guide: Installing PHP 5.2.1, MYSQL 5 and MODx on Windows IIS

Hi,

I seem to be having some difficulties getting PHP installed properly.

Some background: I’m trying to get Modx running on a test server we use in the office. It has a variety of stuff on it. I had PHP installed already, but it was an older version (ver. 4.4.4). Anyway, when I tried to run my modx installation i got a page with a variety of errors on it due to the fact that it didn’t like the existing PHP installation. I uninstalled the old PHP and then reinstalled the new version as per the instructions in the PDF provided by the OP.

Long story short, I painstakingly followed the instructions to a "T" but now I’m getting a CGI application timeout when I test out the installation by running the info.php file.

I should probably consider wiping the test server and starting fresh, or at least look up the issue on some PHP forums, but I thought I’d check here first in the hopes that someone might have some insight.

It seems that MODx is not really ready for a Windows based machine, at least an XP or Vista machine. The instructions for Win 2000 do not apply to an XP or Vista machine, as the security configurations have developed beyond the limitations in Win 2000. So unless someone has a fix for XP, I will pass on MODx and watch with interest for a future iteration that can prevent hours of frustration for a seasoned 20+year developer on the Win environment. Will watch with interest with future developments.

Quote from: jleahy at Jul 19, 2008, 07:33 AM

It seems that MODx is not really ready for a Windows based machine, at least an XP or Vista machine. The instructions for Win 2000 do not apply to an XP or Vista machine, as the security configurations have developed beyond the limitations in Win 2000. So unless someone has a fix for XP, I will pass on MODx and watch with interest for a future iteration that can prevent hours of frustration for a seasoned 20+year developer on the Win environment. Will watch with interest with future developments.

I think your problems stem from the dis-interest between PHP/MySQL and Microsoft in making their stuff work together. And we have a lot more folks running Apache than IIS (even on Windows). It’s a natural dividing line, as PHP/MySQL is much more a part of the LAMP culture.

But back to the problem, have you gotten any other PHP/MySQL applications running on your IIS environment? The web is full of the articles describing the issues Windows folks have recently had getting a stable environment with PHP/MySQL and my bet is your are experiencing the same.

BTW, I run MODx on XP all the time, just never with IIS. I opt for using Apache, because I’m not that big of a masochist.

Don’t we have somebody here who actually is a hosting provider, offering MODx as part of his packages, using IIS?

Quote from: sottwell at Jul 21, 2008, 06:22 AM

Don’t we have somebody here who actually is a hosting provider, offering MODx as part of his packages, using IIS?

We do; but I think these problems are with recent releases of PHP/MySQL not playing well with the IIS environment. I could be completely wrong, but I seem to remember seeing a lot of issues posted by folks trying to install PHP 5.2.x and MySQL 5.0.x in conjunction with IIS in recent months.

I just installed combination of IIS (Win XP) + MySQL and PHP (can’t remember the exact versions but the latest as of 8/2008). The biggest problem I faced was PHP installation created errors. When I instakked PHP manually (quite easy) I had no problems. It took me probably about 2-3 hours along with other work that I was doing at the time.
I may have had some advantage of the fact that I had a clean Win XP machine, with nothing else but latest MS updates installed.

I followed the instructions, however, it does not seem to work.

When I installed Modx -- and get to the Database Information page, I try to click on "Test database server connection and view collations." --- However, there is NO response at all. See attachment.

Does anyone know why this is happening.

Thanks

zeke, your image shows that you are connecting to the mysql database on your local host, but you are not entering a username and password. Try entering your username and password for a user in your mysql database will create privileges.

I am running modx-1.0.0 on Windows Vista Ultimate IIS7 with PHP 5.2.11 and mysql 5.1.39 and the only real problem I ran into was a 500.19 error when visiting the root index.php page, and I needed to rename the web.config file at the root of the website and I was able to complete installation

Hi Tim, thanks for your reply.
I did put it in username and password, but problem is when I clicked on the link blow, nothing is showing. Even I put nothing in the field, it should give me can not create connection error. I got nothing.I guess it causes by connection problem between PHP and MySql.

So I have to try with different way. I tried 2 other way. Reload that machine totally. Finally it was working with everything. But I have to say, IIS does hate PHP. I always run into errors after I succesfully deploy a modx websites. But I can not reload our productive website, so I went to workaround. I load xampp on it, configure to make appache works along with IIS. The second method is working great to me now!

Just my 2 cents for the German audience: MODx is not going to work on German Telekom Servers, no matter what! They use IIS servers too, but you cant change any settings. Better convince your customer not to use Telekom servers.