New open source options for Windows Azure web sites: MediaWiki and phpBB

 Need to set up a powerful wiki quickly? Looking for an open source bulletin board solution for your Windows Azure Web Site? Today, we are announcing the availability of MediaWiki and phpBB in the Windows Azure Web Applications gallery. MediaWiki is the open source software that powers WikiPedia and other large-scale wiki projects, and phpBB is the most widely used open source bulletin board system in the world.

You can deploy a free Windows Azure Web Site running MediaWiki or phpBB with just a few mouse clicks. Sign up for the free trial if you don’t already have a Windows Azure subscription, and then select the option to create a new web site from the gallery.

This will take you to a screen where you can select from a list of applications to be automatically installed by Windows Azure on the new web site you’re creating. You’ll see many popular open source packages there, including MediaWiki and phpBB. Select the option you’d like, and then you’ll be prompted for a few configuration details such as the URL for your web site and database settings for the application:

Fill in the required fields, click the Next button, and you’ll soon have a running ready-to-use web site that is hosting your selected application.

The Windows Web App Gallery also includes MediaWiki and phpBB, so you can deploy either of them on-premises as well. See the MediaWiki and phpBB entries in the gallery.

The MediaWiki project now includes the Windows Azure Storage extensions that allow you to story media files on Windows Azure. You can use this functionality for MediaWiki sites deploy to Windows Azure Web Sites, or for other deployments as well. More information can be found on the MediaWiki wiki.

A big thanks to everyone who helped to make MediaWiki and phpBB work so well on Windows Azure! Markus Glazer, volunteer developer at Wikimedia Foundation, submitted the MediaWiki package to the Windows Azure Web Sites Gallery and integrated MediaWiki with Windows Azure Storage. Nils Adermann from the phpBB community submitted the updated phpBB 3.0.11 package to the Windows Azure Web Sites Gallery with the necessary changes for integration with Windows Azure.

The addition of phpBB and MediaWiki is a great example of Windows Azure’s support for open source software applications, frameworks, and tools. We’re continuing to work with these and other communities to make Windows Azure a great place to host open source applications. What other open source technologies would you like to be able to use on Windows Azure?

Doug Mahugh
Senior Technical Evangelist
Microsoft Open Technologies, Inc.