Installing WordPress on Server 2003 with FastCGI

I’ve finally finished installing WordPress 3.3.1! After some trial and error I was able to successfully configure IIS 6 on my SBS2003 to deliver PHP using FastCGI.  PHP 5.3.9 was configured manually following this guide and this guide.

Here’s the order I did the install:
1. PHP – non-thread safe (php-5.3.9-nts-Win32-VC9-x86.zip)
2. FCGI (fcgisetup_1.5_rtw_x86.msi)
3. MySQL (mysql-5.5.20-win32.msi)
4. WordPress (wordpress-3.3.1.zip)

Through the IIS Manager, fcgiext.dll was added as an application extension for .php and php-cgi.exe was added as a web service extension.

The following lines were configured and enabled in php.ini

extension_dir = “C:PHPext”
error_log=”C:inetpubtempphp-errors.log”
cgi.force_redirect = 0
fastcgi.impersonate = 1
fastcgi.logging = 0
cgi.fix_pathinfo=1

fcgiext.ini also had to be modified to contain:

[Types] php=PHP
[PHP] ExePath=C:phpphp-cgi.exe

Initially WordPress didn’t recognize the MySQL installation. Enabling extension=php_mysql.dll in php.ini and adding libmysql.dll to the php installation directory did the trick.  I also had to add the directory containing php.ini to the system path.

To enable the WordPress spell check I had to enable extension=php_curl.dll in php.ini and restart IIS. Finally, permission to access C:Windowstemp had to be given to ISUR_SERVER to make files up loadable through WordPress.