Windows Server 2022, WordPress

Installing WordPress on Windows: Part2

Installing WordPress on Windows: Part1

Installing WordPress on Windows: Part3

Installing WordPress on Windows: Part4

 

In the second part, we will cover PHP installation and configuration.

 

Some users want to install PHP by using Microsoft Web Platform Installer. I would not recommend it anymore, because we don’t have a choice to install the latest version of PHP. It is better to manual install it. We can download PHP from the site PHP For Windows: Binaries and sources Releases.

 

In general we have three options:

PHP 7.4.29 (the latest 7.4 build),

PHP 8.0.18 (the latest 8.0 build) and

PHP 8.1.5 (the latest 8.1 build).

After testing all three options, I would recommend using PHP 8.1.5 with the latest WordPress version 5.9.3. We get the fastest response and we don’t get internal server errors 500. Some plugins may not be compatible with PHP 8.1.5, but we can solve the plugins problems by using workarounds.

Be aware, that PHP 8.1.5 has not been officially supported yet.

If you will use PHP 8.0.18, be prepare to get internal server error 500 randomly from time to time.

With PHP 7.4.29, your WordPress Site will be much slower.

 

For using PHP as FastCGI with IIS, we should use the Non-Thread Safe (NTS) versions of PHP. So we need to download PHP 8.1.5 VS16 x64 Non Thread Safe zip file.

We have to Unzip everything to the selected PHP folder. I choose the C:\PHP folder.

We create another folder, C:\PHP-System, which will be used for temporary and log files. Inside the C:\PHP-System folder, we create 4 folders:

logs

session.save_path

sys_temp_dir

upload_tmp_dir

Inside logs folder, we create an empty PHP_errors.log file.

 

PHP-System Folder

 

We also create the folder, C:\PHP-Imagick, which will be used for Imagick extension, that is needed for WordPress. We can download php_imagick-3.7.0-8.1-nts-vs16-x64.zip file. We have to Unzip everything to the C:\PHP-Imagick folder. Then copy the php_imagick.dll file in the C:\PHP\ext folder.

 

For future upgrades of PHP, we will only replace files in the C:\PHP, C:\PHP-Imagick folders and the php_imagick.dll file in the C:\PHP\ext folder.

 

 

Now, we have to duplicate the php.ini-production file in C:\PHP folder and rename it to the php.ini.

In the next step, we have to configure the php.ini for WordPress use. We have to change various parameters in the php.ini file:

 

586    ; Log errors to specified file. PHP’s default behavior is to leave this value
587    ; empty.
588    ; https://php.net/error-log
589    ; Example:
590    ;error_log = php_errors.log
591    ; Log errors to syslog (Event Log on Windows).
592    error_log = “C:\PHP-System\logs\PHP_errors.log”

 

694    ; Maximum size of POST data that PHP will accept.
695    ; Its value may be 0 to disable the limit. It is ignored if POST data reading
696    ; is disabled through enable_post_data_reading.
697    ; https://php.net/post-max-size
698    post_max_size = 32M

 

767    ; Directory where the temporary files should be placed.
768    ; Defaults to the system default (see sys_get_temp_dir)
769    sys_temp_dir = “C:\PHP-System\sys_temp_dir”

 

777    ; cgi.force_redirect is necessary to provide security running PHP as a CGI under
778    ; most web servers. Left undefined, PHP turns this on by default. You can
779    ; turn it off here AT YOUR OWN RISK
780    ; **You CAN safely turn this off for IIS, in fact, you MUST.**
781    ; https://php.net/cgi.force-redirect
782    cgi.force_redirect = 0

 

795    ; cgi.fix_pathinfo provides *real* PATH_INFO/PATH_TRANSLATED support for CGI. PHP’s
796    ; previous behaviour was to set PATH_TRANSLATED to SCRIPT_FILENAME, and to not grok
797    ; what PATH_INFO is. For more information on PATH_INFO, see the cgi specs. Setting
798    ; this to 1 will cause PHP CGI to fix its paths to conform to the spec. A setting
799    ; of zero causes PHP to behave as before. Default is 1. You should fix your scripts
800    ; to use SCRIPT_FILENAME rather than PATH_TRANSLATED.
801    ; https://php.net/cgi.fix-pathinfo
802    cgi.fix_pathinfo=1

 

808    ; FastCGI under IIS supports the ability to impersonate
809    ; security tokens of the calling client. This allows IIS to define the
810    ; security context that the request runs under. mod_fastcgi under Apache
811    ; does not currently support this feature (03/17/2002)
812    ; Set to 1 if running under IIS. Default is zero.
813    ; https://php.net/fastcgi.impersonate
814    fastcgi.impersonate = 1
815   
816    ; Disable logging through FastCGI connection. PHP’s default behavior is to enable
817    ; this feature.
818    fastcgi.logging = 1

 

843    ; Temporary directory for HTTP uploaded files (will use system default if not
844    ; specified).
845    ; https://php.net/upload-tmp-dir
846    upload_tmp_dir = “C:\PHP-System\upload_tmp_dir”
847   
848    ; Maximum allowed size for uploaded files.
849    ; https://php.net/upload-tmp-dir
850    upload_max_filesize = 10M

 

917    ;extension=bz2
918    extension=curl
919    ;extension=ffi
920    ;extension=ftp
921    extension=fileinfo
922    extension=gd
923    ;extension=gettext
924    ;extension=gmp
925    extension=intl
926    ;extension=imap
927    ;extension=ldap
928    extension=mbstring
929    extension=exif      ; Must be after mbstring as it depends on it
930    extension=mysqli
931    ;extension=oci8_12c  ; Use with Oracle Database 12c Instant Client
932    ;extension=oci8_19  ; Use with Oracle Database 19 Instant Client
933    ;extension=odbc
934    extension=openssl
935    ;extension=pdo_firebird
936    ;extension=pdo_mysql
937    ;extension=pdo_oci
938    ;extension=pdo_odbc
939    ;extension=pdo_pgsql
940    ;extension=pdo_sqlite
941    ;extension=pgsql
942    ;extension=shmop
943    extension=php_imagick.dll

 

1352   ; where MODE is the octal representation of the mode. Note that this
1353   ; does not overwrite the process’s umask.
1354   ; https://php.net/session.save-path
1355   session.save_path = “C:\PHP-System\session.save_path”

 

1766   ; Determines if Zend OPCache is enabled
1767   opcache.enable=1
1768  
1769   ; Determines if Zend OPCache is enabled for the CLI version of PHP
1770   opcache.enable_cli=0
1771  
1772   ; The OPcache shared memory storage size.
1773   opcache.memory_consumption=2048
1774  
1775   ; The amount of memory for interned strings in Mbytes.
1776   opcache.interned_strings_buffer=64
1777  
1778   ; The maximum number of keys (scripts) in the OPcache hash table.
1779   ; Only numbers between 200 and 1000000 are allowed.
1780   opcache.max_accelerated_files=50000
1781  
1782   ; The maximum percentage of “wasted” memory until a restart is scheduled.
1783   opcache.max_wasted_percentage=15

 

1791   ; When disabled, you must reset the OPcache manually or restart the
1792   ; webserver for changes to the filesystem to take effect.
1793   opcache.validate_timestamps=0
1794  
1795   ; How often (in seconds) to check file timestamps for changes to the shared
1796   ; memory storage allocation. (“1” means validate once per second, but only
1797   ; once per request. “0” means always validate)
1798   opcache.revalidate_freq=0

 

1803   ; If disabled, all PHPDoc comments are dropped from the code to reduce the
1804   ; size of the optimized code.
1805   opcache.save_comments=1

 

1861   ; Mapping base of shared memory segments (for Windows only). All the PHP
1862   ; processes have to map shared memory into the same address space. This
1863   ; directive allows to manually fix the “Unable to reattach to base address”
1864   ; errors.
1865   opcache.mmap_base=0x20000000

 

We have installed and configured PHP for WordPress. It is done the second step with our installing WordPress on Windows series.

 

Next, we have to install and configure IIS that use PHP as FastCGI.

 

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27. January 2022by Simon Abolnar
Written by Simon Abolnar
I am a lecturer of Informatics subjects at Higher Vocational College at the School Center Nova Gorica, located in Slovenia-EU. I have been a System Administrator of Microsoft Servers at SCNG for over 20 years.