WordPress on IIS7 Revisited

A week of up-time on IIS7 has given me some time to really dig in and asses the feasibility of WordPress on a Windows hosting platform. I was particularly interested in testing compatibility of the two, but I also wanted to gauge the performance of the new PHP pipeline in IIS7.

I was pretty impressed with the speed of PHP on IIS7, and setup was painless. Sure there were none of the Apache modules that have become so ubiquitous and configuration was a bit different, but there had to be workarounds. And while I suspect that most PHP applications could be coaxed to run perfectly on an IIS7 box, my final conclusion was that WordPress and IIS just aren't a good match.

Fun with URL Rewriting, WordPress, and IIS7

Aside from wrapping my export routine in a WordPress friendly plugin, accurately transforming the URLs from my Community Server website has been the most time-consuming part of the Community Server to WordPress migration. A domain name change further complicated things, quickly devolving URL rewriting into a non-trivial endeavor.

Keep in mind, however, that how you ultimately handle URL rewriting depends largely on where you are relocating to, and how you plan to get there. For example, if you've decided to make the switch to an Apache-based hosting solution, your options will be much different that moving to an IIS-based one.

Migrating a Community Server Blog to WordPress

If you've noticed that something looks markedly different here, then you're right. I recently made the descision to migrate my blogging back-end from Community Server to WordPress and, well, I couldn't be happier.

That's not to say that Community Server is a bad product; it's not. Community Server is a very powerful, enterprise-class collaboration platform -- somewhat akin to Sharepoint -- with a blog engine thrown into the mix. This makes it incredibly complex, both to install and to manage, a far cry from the no-touch, blog-only deployment of its DotText predecessor. This complexity, combined with a very small online support community, have made Community Server a less than perfect choice for those needing a simple blogging platform.