Joomla site on a Windows hosting package. What should I do?

Mike_Eile

Hi,

I'm looking for a little advice please. I recently took over a website for a company and am designing a new interface for them. Their existing website is Joomla based and the new website will also be Joomla based.

I was developing the new website in a folder within the root folder when I realised today that their hosting is a Windows package and not Linux. I came across this problem when I tried to create SEF urls. The system is not writing to the .htaccess file.

The problem is that the client wants the new site live in two days time. Should I continue to develop on the Windows package? Will this cause problems down the line? Time is very limited and I'm also not that experiences in moving sites between hosting accounts. They also have 9 email addresses on the existing hosting package. What should I do? Thanks

matt-dublin

You can kind of do sef urls with windows hosting and joomla.

Not as pretty as the Linux one but close enough

I'm running one client Joomla site on windows hosting (won't go into why). It's caused a lot of trouble. Never had issues with Joomla on Linux, but have had major hassles with various things on Windows. SEF urls do work fine, as matt-dublin says.

They are looking to add e-commerce at the moment, and I'm insisting the let me migrate the site to linux first!

matt-dublin

SBS what problems are you having on windows?

I've not seen any problems except for the mod rewrite and sef stuff.

If I recall correctly, most (but not all issues) were with 3rd party modules not installing. There were problems with the installation too, but it's been 18 months or so and I can't remember specifics, sorry. I do know I got everything working, eventually, but it took some time.

matt-dublin

ah, i know how to fix this issue. its a permissions issue with placing files.

you need to provide iis_user temp write access to all the folders to install the plugins/apps and then remove it.

install issues killed me for a long while on windows but i figured it out. generally all issues were due to file permissions.

That sounds about right. Will your typical windows shared hosting package allow you to do that? Last time I worked with IIS in any meaningful way was more than 5 years ago when I ran a corporate intranet site on it...

matt-dublin

im not overly sure,

i've got a package on digiweb with my own install of joomla on it and i don't have any issues and haven't had to change permissions.

ill have a play around with it and come back.

Also if you look at the microsoft web console it specifically includes joomla and other CMSs and the utilitys to configure them fairly easily.

http://www.microsoft.com/express/Web/

Techbot

Microsoft's Web Matrix was launched last night in the Westin Hotel , it included a presentation by Ryan Ozimek from Joomla.

Microsoft have formed a partnership with Joomla and have made huge advances in making IIS and Joomla ( and other php applications) work together.

matt-dublin

i meant web matrix not web console.

expression web seems very basic in comparison to dreamweaver and visual studio?

mneylon

There are a couple of ISS components that offer similar functionality as mod_rewrite - I know some people have used them and been very happy, while others are happier moving to linux