elstir

Dear PHP developers and SQL Server users, We, the PHP group in the SQL Connectivity product team, received a lot of feedback in our previous survey in Oct 2009, and we responded to the feedback by delivering a PDO driver in our v2.0 release. After releasing our CTP2 for v2.0 of the driver, we have been very busy responding to feedback and preparing the code for the final release. While this work is in progress, it is time for to review our priorities once again with our primary audience. While we...(read more)

WebMatrix currently offers 3 methods for publishing: Web Deploy, FTP, and FTPS. What’s different and how can you decide between them? 

For starters, your choice of hosting provider may be a factor – not all publishing options will be available from all hosting providers. The hosting providers shown in the Publish > Find Web Hosting in WebMatrix do support all 3 types of publishing, however outside of these providers, you are not guarenteed that FTPS will be enabled or that Web Deploy will be on the hosting server.  My personal publishing preference is the Web Deploy method because it does a selection of steps for you automatically during publish so you don’t have to do them separately – which just makes publishing easier (and it's also faster than FTP).

Here’s a tabular comparison of the options to get an overview of some of the ways these publishing methods differ:

And thanks to Ben Byrd for his FTP insights and helping to make sure this table is accurate!

A common issue being reported by Microsoft WebMatrix Beta users, is that they are unable to easily delete a SQL Server Compact Edition database from with WebMatrix itself. There is a way to delete the CE databases using the Files workspace of WebMatrix, read on to see how.

 

Let’s start by Getting a site set up to work with.

Step 1: Open the Microsoft WebMatrix Beta

Step 2: Select choose site from template

 Step 3: Select the “Empty Site” and click “ok”

 Step 4: Navigate to Databases Workspace by clicking the Databases button in the lower left hand corner of the screen.

Step 5: Click the "New Database" button in the ribbon.

When you click 'New Database' WebMatrix creates an empty SQL CE database underneath the App_Data folder. WebMatrix then adds a dynamic connection to the database file under the site node in the Databases workspace.

 

Now that we now have a database listed underneath the 'Empty Site' node in the tree, let's look at how to delete it.

Step1: Navigate to Files Workspace by clicking the Files button in the lower left hand corner of the screen.

Step 2: Expand the folder structure until the App_Data folder is expanded

Step 3: Right click the 'Empty Site.sdf' file and select the Delete option.

Step 4: Navigate back to the Databases workspace, the refresh the 'Empty Site' folder.

You have now deleted your file based SQL Server Compact Edition database connection from the databases workspace of your application.

Jean Paoli, the General Manager for Interoperability Strategy at Microsoft, delivered a keynote address at the O'Reilly Open Source Convention (OSCON) in Portland, OR , this morning titled "Open Cloud, Open Data." During his keynote , Paoli addressed four foundational elements that comprise an open cloud platform: Data Portability, Standards, Ease of Migration and Deployment, and Developer Choice. Paoli also talked about why Microsoft views these elements as a catalyst for the industry conversations...(read more)

IIS Developer Express Beta doesn’t work with WCF out-of-the-box. If you run a WCF application and browse to it, you will see the following error message:

“Could not load file or assembly 'Microsoft.Web.Administration, Version=7.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35' or one of its dependencies. The system cannot find the file specified.”

This will be addressed in a forthcoming release. Meanwhile there are a couple of simple ways you can workaround this limitation.

Workaround 1: Copy assemblies to the app’s bin folder

Copy the following assemblies from the WebMatrix install location to your application’s bin directory.

• Microsoft.Web.dll
• Microsoft.Web.Administration.dll

By default, WebMatrix gets installed in  “%ProgramFiles%\Microsoft WebMatrix” or “%ProgramFiles(x86)%\Microsoft WebMatrix”, depending on your machine architecture.

Workaround 2: GAC the required assemblies

Installing the above assemblies in the GAC will work as well, but requires you to be an administrator. From an administrator prompt, switch to the WebMatrix install location. Then run the following commands:

gacutil /i Microsoft.Web.Administration.dll

gacutil /i Microsoft.Web.dll

 

One of the above workarounds will hopefully resolve the issue. If not, please let us know and we’ll be happy to investigate.

The multi-step and repetitive process for provisioning, deployment and scale is a simplified one step task with the release of Web Farm Framework 2.0 Beta.

Web Farm Framework 2.0 Beta was published today (download x86 / x64) addressing some of the top requested features and frequently discussed topics in IIS.

Most importantly, it:

-Provides capability to seamlessly provision, deploy and synchronize (platform and content) as a 1 step process
-Enables elastic scale and resource utilization in conjunction with ARR and other load balancing technologies
-Makes server management a breeze with ability to run operations from a unified UI and monitor up to date status
-Provides a rich API set and Power shell cmd-lets for advanced scenario and deeper control

Specifically some of the key features enabled are:

-One step provisioning of a server farm
-Platform Provisioning using Web PI
-Application Provisioning using Web Deploy
-Policy-based Provisioning
-Installation of additional platform components and content
-Reduced down time with load balancing integration using ARR
-Up-to-date status and trace logs of server farm servers
-Extensible model that allows you to write additional providers
-You can learn more about it at http://learn.iis.net/page.aspx/905/microsoft-web-farm-framework-20-beta-for-iis-7/

-Younus

One of the cool WebMatrix features is the ability to manage other databases from within the WebMatrix Databases Workspace.  This post describes a scenario where you can take an existing SQL Compact Edition database from a template site, migrate it to a SQL or SQLExpress database and then connect to your live database and manage it after you’ve published. Step 1: Migrating from SQL Compact to SQLExpress/SQL From a site with a SQLCE database: Navigate to the Databases workspace Select the Home...(read more)

The AVP Nivea Tour Hermosa Beach Open volleyball tournament is being broadcast today with a new Microsoft Silverlight player by Ooyala. As with past AVP events, this tournament is again being delivered using IIS Smooth Streaming. The new Ooyala player, pictured below, includes four live streams that you can switch between instantly. Check out the tournament, the player, and the Smooth Streaming experience at http://bit.ly/avpTV.

To learn more about the technology:

• Check out the Ooyala blog post on their new Silverlight player
• See the full list of features available in the Ooyala player for Silverlight, built on the Silverlight Media Framework
• Learn more about IIS Smooth Streaming

In my last post, one of the tips I described was how to configure a WebMatrix site to use the built-in test SSL certificate.  If you enable SSL for a site within WebMatrix and browse to it using the link in the UI, you’ll probably receive a glaring browser warning along these lines:   These browser warnings are important notifications for live, production sites, but for the development environment the warning is really distracting.  Here are some instructions to configure a trusted...(read more)

Microsoft's been releasing a number of right-sized LEGO pieces lately. In case you missed it, Betas have been announced for: SQL 4 Compact Edition - It has a small embedded file-based SQL Database, and a web-server called IIS Express that's compatible with the full version of IIS. "Razor" Page Syntax - A way to make pages/ViewEngine called "Razor." Your sites can be later be expanded to use all of ASP.NET MVC. It's a simple syntax that is easy to learn. WebMatrix - It's a small...(read more)

Please join me for an interactive webcast that provides an overview of current and upcoming features in IIS Media Services. You can join in the live session or view it on-demand. Here is the official abstract…

  

You may have already heard how broadcasters worldwide are using IIS Media Services and Microsoft Silverlight to stream live events such as Sunday Night Football, the World Cup, the French Open, and the 2010 Winter Olympics.  Have you also heard about the newest media server features from Microsoft, such as IIS Smooth Streaming support for iPhone & iPad, Smooth Multicast, and one-click PlayReady DRM support?  Would you like to learn how you can use IIS Media Services to better reach your audience?
 
The team at Microsoft just released the Beta of IIS Media Services 4.0, and are busy working on the next release.  Attend this session with Chris Knowlton, Senior Product Manager at Microsoft, to learn more about what is available today, and what is coming later this year, in IIS Media Services.
 
Topics to be covered include:

• IIS Smooth Streaming – including Apple devices, low-latency streaming, and multicast
• IIS Transform Manager – easily ingests and converts multiple formats to Smooth Streaming
• IIS Smooth Streaming Format SDK – add Smooth Streaming to your encoding application
• Silverlight Media Framework – a player framework with full Smooth Streaming support
• IIS Smooth Streaming Client Porting Kit – allows you to natively support Smooth Streaming

Be sure to bring your questions, as there will be Q&A time in the second half.

  

MODERATOR

Dan Rayburn
EVP
Streaming Media

PRESENTER

Chris Knowlton
Senior
Product Manager
Microsoft

Ever since IIS7 shipped in Vista I’ve been asked the question: how can I install it on Windows XP?  Until now, that hasn’t been possible.  With the recent release of WebMatrix, you can now install IIS Developer Express – which is based on the latest IIS7x codebase - on any supported Windows operating system including Windows 7, Windows Vista SP1+, Windows XP SP3+, Windows Server 2003 SP2+, Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 R2. 

IIS Developer Express supports all of the latest IIS7 modules, including URL Rewrite, FastCGI, etc.  It support Classic ASP, PHP and of course ASP.NET development, including integrated pipeline. 

WebMatrix provides more than just the IIS7x Web server, it also includes a lightweight tool for Web development, an embedded database, built-in SEO reporting and optimization and the new simplified syntax – Razor - for building ASP.NET Web pages. 

For more information on how to get started with WebMatrix, visit the Learn page, read about top Features, and get oriented with the new Workspaces inside the tool.  Then Download WebMatrix today and try it out!

I was tinkering around with Windows Server 2008 R2 and ran across the Indexing Service search service. http://www.iislogs.com/articles/W2k8R2IndexService/...(read more)

Microsoft has recently launched a beta release of a new project called WebMatrix. This is a complete web development stack that can be used to start developing and deploying web sites. One thing that may be not so obvious from all the existing announcements is the fact that WebMatrix has full support for installing, running and publishing PHP applications.

Here are the examples of how WebMatrix can be used to create and publish a PHP web site (using WordPress as a showcase).

Installing a PHP application

After installing and launching WebMatrix select “Site from Web Gallery” option and then pick WordPress:

Follow the installation steps as described in Download and Install a PHP application. As you proceed you will notice that WebMatrix downloads and installs the necessary components for running WordPress – the latest version of PHP 5.2 and MySQL. At the end of the installation process you will get a working instance of WordPress, that you can configure and customize further:

Notice the port number used in the URL. This is not the standard port 80 used by default in IIS. The site is not running on IIS that is included with operating system. Instead WebMatrix installs and uses IIS Developer Express, which is a developer-focused version of IIS that runs on all versions of Windows, starting from Windows XP. This is actually very cool because now it is possible to get the latest and greatest IIS features on Windows XP instead of using the good old IIS 5.1 as development web server . But even if you already have Windows 7, you may still want to use IIS Developer Express, because with that you do not need to enable real IIS Web Server included with OS on your development machine.

Even though IIS Developer Express is a lightweight development server it comes with everything needed to run PHP applications, including the latest version of FastCGI module and URL Rewrite 2.0. This means that after you install WordPress with WebMatrix you can enable WordPress’ pretty permalinks by following the instructions at IIS URL Rewrite Module support in WordPress.

Note: By default WebMatrix and IIS Developer Express are not configured to run PHP even if PHP is already installed on the machine. To work this around  install any PHP application via WebMatrix UI. This way WebMatrix will configure IIS Developer Express to handle PHP requests. This is something that will be fixed in future releases of WebMatrix.

Modifying a PHP application

After the WordPress is installed there are several things you can do with it from within WebMatrix. For example you can edit the theme files by using the built-in editor:

You can check what kind of HTTP requests are made by Web Browser to load a typical WordPress page:

(Learn more about this feature at Using WebMatrix Beta: Analyze Your WebSite)

Also, you can check the WordPress database content by using the WebMatrix Database Manager:

And, finally, you can run the search engine optimization analysis and fix any SEO violations found within the application:

(Learn more about this feature at Using WebMatrix Beta: Make your Website SEO Friendly)

Publishing a PHP application

The last step is the publishing of the web application on a live web server. WebMatrix can publish the content to a web server by using various protocols: FTP, FTP/SSL and WebDeploy (note that FTP protocols cannot be used to publish MySQL database). You can pick a hosting provider from the list offered by WebMatrix or you if you know the publishing settings from your hosting provider you can manually enter them in WebMatrix.

When you publish the content the WebMatrix will show you the list of files and the database that will be uploaded to the server. Note also that during publishing the WebMatrix will replace the current database connection settings in wp-config.phpfile with the connection settings used on a hosting web server. WebMatrix will extract that information from the connection string that you specify in publishing settings:

(Learn more about publishng web sites at Using WebMatrix Beta: Publish Your WebSite)

Feedback and suggestions

The WebMatrix is a beta release and the WebMatrix team is open to any constructive feedback on how to improve the product. Do you have any suggestions or have you run into any problems when using WebMatrix? What PHP related features would you like to see in this product? Please let the team know by starting the thread on WebMatrix forum or by leaving a comment here.

Microsoft has recently launched a beta release of a new project called WebMatrix . This is a complete web development stack that can be used to start developing and deploying web sites. One thing that may be not so obvious from all the existing announcements is the fact that WebMatrix has full support for installing, running and publishing PHP applications. Here are the examples of how WebMatrix can be used to create and publish a PHP web site (using WordPress as a showcase). Installing a PHP application...(read more)

Here’s a short list of really cool features to try out in the new WebMatrix : Use Web Platform Installer v3.0 Beta to install Apps to both WebMatrix and IIS Manage and Maintain Other Databases from WebMatrix Perform SEO Analysis and Review Reports on other sites from within WebMatrix Quickly create a test SSL binding for your site Use Web Platform Installer v3.0 Beta to Install Apps to Both WebMatrix and IIS The new version of WebPI is designed to install web applications to both WebMatrix and IIS...(read more)

The news of WebMatrix was just released, causing a lot of interest in the tech community.  See Scott Guthrie’s blog post for details on WebMatrix, IIS Express, SQL Server Compact and the Razor syntax. The nice thing about all of these technologies Read More......(read more)

WebMatrix, Microsoft’s end-to-end web development platform, makes building, testing, optimizing, and publishing websites for the Windows web stack quick and easy. WebMatrix is small yet powerful. It provides a solid, reliable platform for customizing popular web applications, such as WordPress, Droopal, Umbarco, and Joomla, or for building your own custom website. WebMatrix streamlines web development while offering developers the flexibility to incorporate their own workflow into the process. WebMatrix installs quickly, is easy to master, and integrates seamlessly with Microsoft’s professional development tools and servers such as IIS 7, Visual Studio and SQL Server. Best of all, you can download WebMatrix beta for free with the Web Platform Installer.

WebMatrix has a number of advantages that make it an ideal Web development stack for everyone from professional designers and developers to novices and hobbyist, for example; 

• WebMatrix is small. It’s under 50 MB (under 15MB if you have .NET version 4 loaded) and it installs in a matter of minutes.
• WebMatrix is open. You can find, download, install, configure, customize, optimize, and publish a wide variety of free open source web applications quickly and easily.
• WebMatrix is powerful. It uses the same powerful Web server, database engine and frameworks as Web sites on the internet, so the transition from development to production environment is smooth and seamless.
• WebMatrix is flexible. It’s well-suited for applications written in PHP, as well as for ASP.NET.
• WebMatrix is simple. You can add uncomplicated, dynamic server code to your site using Razor syntax for ASP.NET web pages.
• WebMatrix is accommodating. It comes with its own has its own simple database, SQL Server Compact, along with built-in management for SQL and MySQL databases.
• WebMatrix is smart. Integrated search engine optimization reporting helps improve your site’s rankings.
• WebMatrix is comprehensive. When your site is ready to publish you have access to a variety of Web hosting options. 

WebMatrix integrates a Web server, database and programming frameworks into a single, integrated experience designed to work together seamlessly and complement one another. WebMatrix components include:

 

You can learn more about WebMatrix beta at Microsoft/Web

Today, we announced the beta version of WebMatrix, which includes a developer-focused version of IIS called IIS Developer Express. You can learn and download WebMatrix using the following links:

http://www.microsoft.com/web/webmatrix/

http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2010/07/06/introducing-webmatrix.aspx

 

In this first blog post, I’d like to help you understand IIS Developer Express better and point you to some existing resources. We’ll use the coming days to drill into various aspects of the product.

First, a bit about myself

I am a program manager with IIS and joined the team a short (but intense and exciting) 5 months ago. Have been with MS since Dec 2007, prior to which I spent 10+ years as a developer and lead in the San Francisco bay area. My last stop was with Intuit’s desktop payroll product team in Mountain View, CA. Back at HP, I was part of a group that built an embedded web server for the imaging and printing platform. I have been fascinated with the Web ever since and am relishing my role with IIS. I work on IIS Developer Express as well as other portions of the core IIS server.

 

Back to IIS Developer Express

The goal of WebMatrix (and IIS Developer Express) is make Web development a lot simpler and productive on the Windows platform. WebMatrix includes a few other components to deliver this promise (more information in the links above).

You can get a good overview of IIS Developer Express from Scottgu’s blog from last week. Note that Scott uses the unofficial name of the product (IIS Express). Also, please note that not all of the features Scott discusses in his blog posting and responses are implemented in Beta. In particular, the Beta version isn’t officially integrated with Visual Studio (this support will be added to VS10 later on), can’t be redistributed and doesn’t support all IIS7.x modules.

Here are some additional links to look at.

http://learn.iis.net/page.aspx/868/iis-developer-express-overview/

http://learn.iis.net/page.aspx/901/iis-developer-express-faq/

The first link will give you a 50-foot overview of IIS Developer Express and explain its relationship to IIS7.x. The second one is intended to help you better understand what is in the Beta release.

Check out WebMatrix and IIS Developer Express, and let us know if you have any questions.

Today my team launched an exciting new project called WebMatrix. 

Seamless, small and best of all free, WebMatrix includes a complete Web development stack that installs in minutes and elegantly integrates a Web server, database and programming frameworks into a single, integrated experience.

Use WebMatrix to streamline the way you code, test, and deploy your own ASP.NET and PHP Web site, or start a new site using the world’s most popular open source apps like DotNetNuke, Umbraco, WordPress, or Joomla.

WebMatrix is the easiest way to learn Web development and makes it simple to build and publish Web sites on the internet. Start with Web standards including HTML, CSS and JavaScript and then connect to a database or add in dynamic server code using the new simplified Razor syntax to build ASP.NET web pages simply and efficiently.

WebMatrix includes IIS Developer Express, a built-in Web server that shares the same code base that ships in Windows Server and powers some of the world’s biggest Web sites. IIS Developer Express has been fine tuned to work specifically for developer environments, supports all of the key features of the full version of IIS, without the complexity of a full Web server.

Using a database has never been easier! WebMatrix includes a small, embedded database with SQL Server Compact that can live with your Web site code and content. Use it to start building your next Web site and when you’re ready to publish simply copy the database file from your computer to any Web server, or seamlessly migrate the data to SQL Server when you’re ready for high-volume traffic.

With WebMatrix on your desktop, you’re using the same powerful Web server, database engine and frameworks that your Web site on the internet uses, which makes the transition from development to production smooth and seamless. As your Web development needs grow, WebMatrix provides a seamless on-ramp to Microsoft’s professional tools and servers including Visual Studio, ASP.NET MVC and SQL Server.

Learn more about WebMatrix on the home page and read about the cool new features available to try out today.  Download WebMatrix today and check it out!