I’ve blogged in the past about setting up mojoPortal with IIS, but nothing could be simpler than using WebMatrix instead. Because it uses a lightweight web server, IIS Express, that can run ASP.Net and PHP, you can download a multitude of open-source web applications for evaluation and web development without the fuss of configuring or installing IIS (use Home Editions of Windows for web development). In this post I’ll use the Web Platform Installer to setup Acquia Drupal with MySQL and in another, mojoPortal with Web Matrix.

The easiest way to set things up is with the Microsoft Web Platform Installer. It installs the required software and then allows you to select a web platform from a Gallery of options.

Once installed you can select a ‘Site’ from a Web Gallery.

If you select a PHP based Site, such as Acquia Drupal

You can also select to install MySQL

It will install and configure all the required dependencies for you (Drupal, PHP, MySQL). Best of all everything runs under IIS Express so there’s no tweaking of web servers. If you already have IIS installed on your computer you can leave it there for existing sites without having to worry about making changes to the Metabase or configuring URL rewrite, Fast CGI and so on.

Installs in minutes

New folders are created in the Task bar as part of the Platform Installer

Here I am opening an Acquia Drupal Site in WebMatrix. It will list the folder structure and files for the site from where you can open all types of files extensions (CSS, ASPX, PHP, HTML, JS etc) for editing.

Clean URL’s, Time Zone, everything is ready to start development.

You can even use WebMatrix to browse the MySQL tables. Do you still need phpMyAdmin to administer MySQL tables? If you only ever used phpMyAdmin for Backup and Restore of databases, you can do this from the command line. If you cant live without phpMyAdmin you’ll need to install it separately but you’ll need an IIS (not Express) or Apache Web Server.

As mentioned the Web Platform Installer sets up Program Groups off the Start Menu for MySQL. One option is the MySQL Command Line Client which removes the need for phpMyAdmin. You login to the MySQL Command Line with the password you specified during setup in the Web Platform Installer. You’ll then need to know basic SQL to query tables and MySQL commands such as show databases; show tables; to browse MySQL catalogues.

Of course most of this can be achieved with the WebMatrix Data tab in the interface. Probably the most important command is to backup your MySQL Database (hopefully this will be added to the interface soon). In its basic form you need to have the MySQL Bin folder accessible (installed by the Web Platform Installer) and enter the mysqldump command

eg from C:\Program Files\MySQL\MySQL Server 5.1\bin, issue : mysqldump -u root -p mydatabase > c:\mydatabasebackup.sql. There are many options including one to gzip the file.

Of course, if you are really serious and want to set up a ‘Multisite’ Drupal development environment it may be best to install the Acquia Drupal for Windows Stack.

This will install the Apache Web Server amongst other components. The program has its own Control Panel which allows you to setup multiple Acquia Drupal sites easily, each with their own port number and MySQL database using the one installed version of Drupal. With WebMatrix you’ll have a separate copy of Drupal per site.

Note with Acquia you still need to provide your own toolset (Dreamweaver, Expression Web, WebMatrix) to edit your site’s files (PHP, CSS, JS etc) but of course you can also use a plain text editor or Visual Studio, but like the above mentioned editors and others, WebMatrix color formats the syntax.

Once you have the Web Platform Installer and WebMatrix installed, you can later add dozens of other open source sites (Umbraco, Kentico, Wordpress, Joomla, Moodle), as well as a selection of Web Frameworks and Database tools. Its a good way to evaluate different products, with a lightweight web server built in, to see if you want to specialize on certain platforms, perhaps using more sophisticated tools and components if you need to download them later, or just use WebMatrix and other free tools if this fulfils your development needs.