New Group: Drupal 7 on Windows

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brian.travis's picture

I created this group to see what kind of interest there is in running Drupal 7 on a Windows environment. There is already a group to dedicated to Drupal on IIS, which has a good following of people interested in getting Drupal running under Microsoft's Internet Information Servier. The group is mostly focused on Drupal 6, and has some good content.

I wanted a group to discuss the specific issues around running Drupal 7 on Windows, particularly the use of Microsoft's SQL Server as a replacement for MySQL. This is made possible by the work done by a team at Microsoft that wrote a driver for SQL Server, and then packaged up the whole thing as an installable item.

So, welcome to the group. I hope this group furthers the effort to get more Windows developers interested in the wonderful world of Drupal.

Comments

The link is:

merge groups?

greggles's picture

In general it's best if groups have a long vision: Drupal 7 on Windows will last for at least a few years but eventually Drupal 9 comes out and the purpose is gone.

Why not just use the "Drupal on IIS" group? Maybe we need to broaden "Drupal on IIS" to really be about "Drupal on Windows" ? I feel like 90% of the content that is relevant for Drupal 7 on Windows is also relevant for Drupal on IIS, so we should merge and repurpose as appropriate.

Agreed

pcorbett's picture

@brian.travis Rather than fractioning an already small subset of Drupal users, I agree that this should stick/adjust to a more generic Drupal on Windows (IIS, Apache, MySQL SQL Server, etc.). As more support is developed around Drupal 7+ and the SQL Server Driver (see Damien's Work) I'm sure interest in this group will grow.

Merge groups

brian.travis's picture

I agree that we have a small subset for now. I posted on the Drupal on IIS group and didn't get much response. I also pinged the owner and didn't hear back.

As far as the "7" vs "9" problem, I agree that it can be dated. I wanted to put "7" in there now to focus on moving forward. I was just concerned that a "Drupal on Windows" group would attract questions from people wanting to get SQL Server running on Drupal 5 or other concerns like that. I figured that, once D7 was established as the default version, we could change the name of the group to "Drupal on Windows"

But this is just the kind of feedback I was looking for. I'd be happy to merge the groups, but I would want to broaden it from "Drupal on IIS" to "Drupal on Windows". Perhaps when the millions of Windows developers flock to Drupal, more specialization could be done.

Thoughts?

great

greggles's picture

I conctacted "chicagomom" - the manager of the Drupal on IIS group asking her if we could expand the focus of the Drupal on IIS group.

The standard is to wait 2 weeks so I've made a note to come back and check on this in 2 weeks.

Thanks for your flexibility - this seems like a great change.

And, thanks for your enthusiasm for Drupal on Windows - lots of great discussions here that could use more advice.

chicagomom's picture

Well, my ears were burning. Sorry for the lack of response. I appreciate the thread, and wrote to Greg that I'm fine with expanding to D on W except...

SQL Server is certainly going to come up now that we can use it w/D7 and I think that would make some great discussion. But I wonder if expanding to Windows in general will make it more difficult for IIS users to find clear configuration, performance
tuning, security, and troubleshooting information specific to WIMPy Drupal (or WISPy Drupal). The WIMP stack seems to have its own set of issues, and seems to have so many differences eg like FastCGI, scaling.

So if we do broaden it to Windows, I think it would be important to have separate wikis/pages for each web server. So many of the pages on d.o. seem a mishmash of confusing steps and "what web server are you talking about?" comments. If you think we can manage those differences in a productive way (ie rather than "you should really switch to Brand X webserver, that's what I use"), that'd be fine with me.

Carolyn

chicagomom on Twitter and d.o.

help

fsjay's picture

Hi,

Im looking for some consulting help on getting a Drupal install working on a Win 2008/IIS7.5 box. Do you know of anybody?

Thanks

Perfect Timing!

MrPhilbert's picture

I'm a windows user (both desktop and server). I have a windows 2008 r2 dedicated server hosting Drupal. I have some experience here (a couple years) and just started a website (www.siteperspectives.com) yesterday. I am posting videos on each step of the buildout. One of them is 301 redirects in IIS 7.
I too have found little information specific to windows and have learned a lot including multisites, file permissions etc. I (just like anyone) still have a lot more to learn. That is why I was glad to see this group.

I have seen all to often questions regarding hosting on Windows replied to with "just switch to Linux".

I would love to contribute as well as hear any feadback.

Thanks for starting this,
Philbert

Sorry Chicagomom, I did not know about your group. I'd like to join your group as well.

transformation...complete

greggles's picture

I've now merged the groups, made Brian an admin, and updated the "mission" for this group to fit with Carolyn's suggestions.

Thanks, everyone! Yay!

Help

fsjay's picture

Hi,

Im looking for some consulting help on getting a Drupal install working on a Win 2008/IIS7.5 box. Do you know of anybody?

Thanks

Started down this path, too

skowyra's picture

I started documenting what I was doing to get Drupal 7 running on Windows 2008/MS SQL.

http://rundrupalonwindows.com/

Unfortunately, I got sidetracked and have more work to do. Plus, as a step-by-step how-to install, it's not in the best form but it may help.

Jim

Where can I find groups for Drupal and MSSQL?

bg1's picture

I am interested in Drupal with MSSQL but not necessarily IIS (in other words, Drupal remains on Linux but database = MSSQL running on Windows Server.

Can anyone direct me to groups or individuals interested in this or similar?

Thanks in advance for any insights.

-- A project I have in mind is a family of modules that would manage nodes on the local Drupal MySQL (or whatever) database and simultaneously manage the content-type content on the remote MSSQL database (with ability to treat the Drupal content-type sort of like a database view - perhaps eventually with the ability to tie it into other Drupal modules such as the Views module). Does that sound crazy?

Your post has several aspects

stuartEngelhardt's picture

Your post has several aspects to it, but one of them I can possibly help with:

If you want Drupal on a Linux box with database in MSSQL, that should be fine, just update your settings.php file (sites/default/settings.php - or sites/{host}/settings.php) with the proper connection string, somewhere around line 92:

$db_url = 'mysql://username:password@localhost/databasename';

I would imagine the mysql would change to be mssql - but the key here is @localhost should change to the other server's name or IP address (optionally :port), such as:

$db_url = 'mssql://dbUser:dbPwd@msbox.my.domain:33066/drupalRemoteDB';

Now you also mentioned mirroring a MySQL database with an MSSQL clone of it - that's something completely different (although it sounds intriguing, at least for educational purposes).

New Hampshire

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