Programming Tutorials

Running different websites on different versions of PHP in Windows 2003 & IIS6 platform

By: Donald  

On the Windows 2003 & IIS6 platform, you can run different websites on different versions & copies of PHP. This is useful in at least two cases:

1. You want one website on your box to have register_globals on, but since you're running IIS, you cannot specify that in an .htaccess file. And you definately don't want register_globals on for the rest of the websites.
2. You want to run different versions of PHP for different websites, or even just different extensions. Say you wanted one site to use 4.0.5 and a different site to use 4.1.11.

Its simple, just:
1. Move your php.ini file from your c:\windows\ directory directly to your php directory (by default that would be c:\php\)
2. Make sure you don't have a php.ini file in any other location that would supercede the c:\php\php.ini file. Using phpinfo(); is useful here.
3. Have your alternate version of php (either a different version or a different php.ini) have its own install directory, like c:\php4RG\ or c:\php405\.
4. In the Home Directory Configuration for your website, specify the .php extension to use a different script, pointing it at the alternate directory.

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