Web Platform Installer News & Articles

You already knew that Microsoft supported Drupal 6 in both their Web Platform Installer and WebMatrix tool. But now the self-proclaimed king of interoperability adds support for the latest version of the open source Web CMS: Drupal 7.

Microsoft has just released the latest version of their Web Platform Installer and Web Application Gallery.

The beta for version 2 has been out since March, adding a community version of PHP and ASP.NET MVC 1 to an already full list of applications. New web applications that could be downloaded included Umbraco and Silverstripe Web CMS.

With today's release of the WPI, you will also get the Windows Azure SDK to get you started on those cloud-based applications and the IIS Media Pack.

Some of the latest additions to the Web Application Gallery include learning management system Moodle, Sitefinity web content management and Kentico Web CMS among many others.

If you were nervous about installing the beta version of WPI 2, you don't have to wait any longer. This is definitely an easy way to get your development environment up and running and a version of your favorite open source Web CMS to start developing your web applications.

When Acquia (news, site) came out with the Drupal Stack (DAMP) Installer, many new users likely got very excited. You can use this installer to download and install everything you need to get a Drupal (news, site) web content management environment up and running with a single click on a Mac or Windows system. But while it was a good way to get Drupal up and running quickly, it didn't have everything you may have wanted.

Acquia asked the community what new features they would like to see with the DAMP Installer and the community responded -- multisite support. Acquia, of course, obliged.

Is it a sign of the times? People want an easy way to install applications on their PCs. Microsoft's Web Platform Installer (news, site) is certainly looking like just the ticket.

Released to the public in January of this year, Microsoft has announced that the Web Platform Installer has reached 1.5 million product downloads. This includes free, core products to run websites on the desktop like ISS7, Visual Web Developer 2008 Express Edition and SQL Server 2008 Express Edition. In addition you can download ASP.NET and PHP.

The Windows Application Gallery alone has had 100,000 application downloads. This is where you can pick web content management systems like Umbraco, Drupal and Silverstripe, along with some blogging apps like Subtext.

The Web Platform Installer is Microsoft's vision of a place where the development community can get access to the best open source .NET and PHP-based solutions.

“In 2008, we placed a large bet on the fact that the Microsoft Web Platform and interoperability with Open Source community applications, together, would be something that would benefit both open communities and developers for building Web applications," said Lauren Cooney, group product manager, Web Platform & Standards at Microsoft. And they have been extremely happy with the results. 

Just think of how many downloads they would have if Windows SharePoint Services was among the list of applications.

There was a lot of interesting news coming out of MIX09 yesterday. A new beta release for the Microsoft Web Platform Installer was one of them. What's new in Beta 2? And what's this we hear about the Web PI now installing PHP and some popular open source content management applications?

Developing Microsoft-based web applications just got a little bit easier with the release of a new Web Platform Installer from Microsoft. No longer do you need to worry about installing the proper development environment technologies, in the proper order -- Microsoft has done the hard work for you.