Build Out Your Web Servers Using Free Tools in Web Platform Installer

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msweb-logo Scott Guthrie, corporate vice president  .NET Developer Division, describes the Microsoft Web Platform Installer  that makes installing and configuring web server and web development stacks really easy in his posting Microsoft Web Platform Installer. ISVs can use Web Platform Installer to be sure customer sites are ready to accept your software. And you can use it to help build out your test servers.

It is a free tool that you can download from the Microsoft site for Web.  Here’s the direct link to the installer – choose the 2.0 version.  It works with Windows XP, Vista, Windows 7, Windows Server 2003 and Windows Server 2008.

The Microsoft Web Platform Installer 2.0 (Web PI) is a free tool that makes it simple to download, install and keep up-to-date with the latest components of the Microsoft Web Platform, including Internet Information Services (IIS), SQL Server Express, .NET Framework and Visual Web Developer. In addition, install popular open source ASP.NET and PHP web apps with the Web PI.

Web Platform Installer 2.0 helps you:

  • Install free popular ASP.NET and PHP web apps such as DotNetNuke and WordPress.
  • Install the latest version of the .NET Framework. This includes everything you need to work with ASP.NET.
  • Install the latest version of IIS, including latest IIS Web extensions like IIS Media Services.
  • Install the latest version of SQL Server 2008 Express. This includes both the database engine and tools.
  • Install the latest version of Visual Web Developer Express, Our full featured free web development tool.
  • In addition to everything above, the Web PI also includes the latest community version of PHP for Windows.

You quickly install and customize all the software you need to develop or deploy web sites and applications on a Windows machine.

Guthrie explains how the free URL Rewrite module enables you to publish custom URLs from your sites and optimize them for search engine optimization (SEO). For more information about search engine optimization, see IIS SEO Toolkit Beta Now Available on our team blog. 

In addition, the free Application Request Routing supports forward-proxy style scenarios, and enables dynamic load-balancing of requests across multiple web-server machines so you can allowing you to scale out, move machines behind DMZ firewall scenarios, and bring machines in and out of a farm for maintenance without disruption.

The web platform installer also integrates with the new Windows Web Application Gallery. Web Application Gallery helps you share your web app with millions of Windows users.

For more information, see Microsoft Web Platform Installer on ScottGu’s blog.