Installing php in Microsoft IIS 7.0 and later

This section contains instructions for manually setting up Internet Information Services (IIS) 7.0 and later to work with PHP on Microsoft Windows Vista SP1, Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008 R2. For instructions on setting up IIS 5.1 and IIS 6.0 on Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 refer to Microsoft IIS 5.1 and IIS 6.0.

In the Windows Start Menu choose "Run:", type "CompMgmtLauncher" and click "Ok";

If the "Web Server (IIS)" role is not present under the "Roles" node, then add it by clicking "Add Roles";

If the "Web Server (IIS)" role is present, then click "Add Role Services" and then enable the "CGI" checkbox under "Application Development" group;

Click "Next" and then "Install" and wait for the installation to complete.

Configuring IIS to process PHP requests
Download and install PHP in accordance to the instructions described in manual installation steps

Note: Non-thread-safe build of PHP is recommended when using IIS. The non-thread-safe builds are available at » PHP for Windows: Binaries and Sources Releases.

Configure the CGI- and FastCGI-specific settings in php.ini file as shown below:

%windir%\system32\inetsrv\appcmd set config /section:system.webServer/fastCGI ^
/+[fullPath='c:\PHP\php-cgi.exe']

Configure IIS to handle PHP specific requests by running the command shown below. Replace the value of the scriptProcessor parameter with the absolute file path to the php-cgi.exe file.

Example #3 Creating handler mapping for PHP requests

%windir%\system32\inetsrv\appcmd set config /section:system.webServer/handlers ^
/+[name='PHP_via_FastCGI', path='*.php',verb='*',modules='FastCgiModule',^
scriptProcessor='c:\PHP\php-cgi.exe',resourceType='Either']

This command creates an IIS handler mapping for *.php file extension, which will result in all URLs that end with .php being handled by FastCGI module.

Note: At this point the required installation and configuration steps are completed. The remaining instructions below are optional but highly recommended for achieving optimal functionality and performance of PHP on IIS.

Impersonation and file system access
It is recommended to enable FastCGI impersonation in PHP when using IIS. This is controlled by the fastcgi.impersonate directive in php.ini file. When impersonation is enabled, PHP will perform all the file system operations on behalf of the user account that has been determined by IIS authentication. This ensures that even if the same PHP process is shared across different IIS web sites, the PHP scripts in those web sites will not be able to access each other's files as long as different user accounts are used for IIS authentication on each web site.

For example IIS 7, in its default configuration, has anonymous authentication enabled with built-in user account IUSR used as a default identity. This means that in order for IIS to execute PHP scripts, it is necessary to grant IUSR account read permission on those scripts. If PHP applications need to perform write operations on certain files or write files into some folders then IUSR account should have write permission to those.

To determine what user account is used as an anonymous identity in IIS 7 use the following command. Replace the "Default Web Site" with the name of IIS web site that you use. In the output XML configuration element look for the userName attribute.

appcmd.exe set config -section:system.webServer/fastCgi ^
/+"[fullPath='C:\php\php.exe',arguments=''].environmentVariables.^
[name='PHPRC',value='C:\Some\Directory\']" /commit:apphost