In this post, I would like to note some of the nuances of installing WordPress on a Windows server running IIS. This is not a tutorial on installing WordPress on IIS as you can find many of these online already. This is more a list of things I have encountered that were not mentioned in any tutorials that I have read.
My recent experience involved installing WordPress on a Windows Server 2008 R2 web server running IIS 7 and installing the corresponding MySQL database on a separate Windows Server.
First I will list some general tips and information regarding getting WordPress installed on a Windows server. Then I will get into some specific information about MySQL on Windows and WordPress connectivity.
Notes on Installing WordPress on a Windows Server Running IIS
- WordPress on IIS requires PHP and of course, a MySQL database. If your requirements allow the MySQL database to be installed on the same server as WordPress i.e. the web server, then by all means do it. If you must separate the two then be sure to read the section on MySQL below.
- If you are migrating or copying an existing WordPress site to a server with IIS then take a look at the Duplicator plugin found here: https://wordpress.org/plugins/duplicator/. This is a fantastic and free plugin that makes migrating WordPress a breeze (I will probably blog about this plugin in the future).
- If possible, use the Web Platform Installer to install PHP, MySQL, and WordPress itself (If you are using Duplicator then you don’t need to install WordPress). The Web Platform Installer is a really useful tool to find, download, and install web-based applications. It will make your life a lot easier when it comes to installing applications that are not Windows native.
- Once you have installed WordPress on IIS or successfully restored your site using Duplicator, be sure to give the IUSER account both read and write privileges to the directory where your WordPress site is installed. If you don’t do this you will most likely run into some strange issues with content loading or uploading media to your site.
Notes on Installing a WordPress MySQL Database on a Windows Server with WordPress on a Different Server
- First, if you do not have MySQL installed on your Windows server then you will need to get it installed. As mentioned in the previous section, the Web Platform Installer will make installing MySQL a trivial task.
- By default, a database created in MySQL on Windows does not allow remote connections. Once you have MySQL installed and either A) have manually created an empty database for WordPress or B) plan on using Duplicator or similar plugin to migrate an existing WordPress site, you then need to be sure that your database user is enabled to connect remotely. To do this you can perform the following:
- Open the MySQL command line tool on the server
- Run the following statement to verify whether or not your user has remote privileges:
- SELECT * from information_schema.user_privileges;
- If you do not see the appropriate privileges you can use the following commands to enable remote connectivity(replace username with your database username and password with the user’s password)
- GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON *.* TO ‘username’@’%’ IDENTIFIED BY ‘password’;
- FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
- More information and explanation on the above commands can be found here: http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/adding-users.html
- Make sure the MySQL default port, 3306, is open to allow remote connectivity
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