Being a PHP developer on LAMP servers for quite some time, is there something I need to consider when preparing an application for IIS on Windows.
Make sure you get the FastCGI extension for IIS 6.0 or IIS 7.0. This is the most important thing you can have when running PHP in IIS. Also in this article you need to configure:
http://learn.iis.net/page.aspx/247/using-fastcgi-to-host-php-applications-on-iis-60/
Everything except this is simple, MySQL and what not.
We simply implemented PHP 5.2.6 + FastCGI on our shared hosting platform without any problems. As long as you follow the steps described in the Nick related article , then you should be fine.
My only additional advice would be to forget about using the fcgiconfig.js script to modify the fcgiext.ini file, this is more a hindrance than help. Just edit it manually, you will also learn more about how this works.
fcgiconfig.js
If you are installing PHP on IIS 7 then this link is worth reading though:
Using FastCGI to Host PHP Applications on IIS 7
@ pix0r
It actually annoyed me too much and nothing came close to Apache mod_rewrite. Because they all have an overly complex XML structure. So I really spent the time and wrote my own rewriting module for IIS 6.0 and IIS 7.0. Non-.NET applications only work in IIS 7.0.
http://www.managedfusion.com/products/url-rewriter/
http://www.codeplex.com/urlrewriter
One of the highlights that I had with IIS is the lack of Apache mod_rewrite. There are other work-related issues, depending on what you are doing, but just keep in mind that you will have to make a little difference to work with IIS if you use mod rewriting heavily.
As you go from LAMP (a few cool acronyms) to WIMP (less cool), you might have to mentally prove yourself. Otherwise, I had very few problems with PHP on Windows.
ISAPI rewrite ( http://www.isapirewrite.com/ ) is $ 99 and works great for me to rewrite a URL.
Why not go with Apache on Windows?
If you are using iis 7, follow this project, http://phpmanager.codeplex.com/ .