msdigest.net

Awesome release from the IIS team. Now it is possible to do some scripting and automating IIS and web site/app configurations with the Web Platform Installer (WebPI). A command line interface for the WebPI has been released.

For everyone who does not know the Microsoft Web Platform Installer 3.0 (Web PI) it is a free tool that makes getting the latest components of the Microsoft Web Platform, including Internet Information Services (IIS), SQL Server Express, .NET Framework and Visual Web Developer very easy.

The Web PI also makes it easy to install and run the most popular free web applications for blogging, content management and more with the built-in Windows Web Application Gallery.

Read more and download the command line interface at IIS.net.

Microsoft has released IIS Express 7.5 and WebMatrix and made them available as free download.

WebMatrix is a complete Web development stack for pragmatic developers. WebMatrix is the IDE which elegantly integrates a Web server (IIS Express), database (SQL Compact) and programming frameworks (ASP.NET and PHP) into a single, integrated experience.

IIS Express is a simple and lightweight version of IIS that is optimized for developers. It is free, supports the powerful features of IIS, and can run on Windows XP and above.

• Read more about IIS Express 7.5 and download it here.
• Read more about WebMatrix and get is using the Web Platform Installer here.
• More about the WebMatrix announcement here.

Another cool tool for IIS 7. The PHP Manager has been released by Ruslan from the IIS team. It’s available for download at codeplex. PHP Manager is a tool for IIS 7 that greatly simplifies installation, configuration, management and troubleshooting of PHP in IIS.

Read more…

Ruslan from the IIS team, has released a new module for IIS 7, the PHP Manager for IIS 7, currently in beta.

It is an IIS extension for setting up and managing multiple PHP installations on IIS 7 servers. It can be used to:

• Register PHP with IIS;
• Run multiple PHP versions side by side;
• Check PHP runtime configuration and environment (output of phpinfo() function)
• Configure various PHP settings
• Enable or disable PHP extensions
• Remotely manage PHP configuration in php.ini fille

Read more and download it here.

Thomas Deml fra the IIS team did a great presentation af TechEd 2010, with this topic.

Get pptx here and see the full presentation from TechEd Online here.

Read the IIS blog about the presentation.

Saw some news at this Microsoft blog, about what’s coming in SP1 for Exchange 2010 regarding Exchange hosting.

It is important especially to those who are running current HMC Hosted Exchange because Exchange 2010 SP1 Hosting model will replace the existing Exchange hosting in HMC.

Read the blog post.

Last week at Microsoft TechEd, SP1 for Exchange 2010 was made available to the public.

Read more at the Exchange blog.

Download it here.

Great news for the hosting community, DotNetPanel has released their DNP software as Open Source under the name Website Panel.

DotNetPanel has undoubtedly been the best .NET based Control Panel for Windows hosting, such as IIS, Exchange, SharePoint and Hyper-V.

For reason they have now decided to make it available for free under the open source license.

We are excited to announce that SMB SAAS Systems Inc. has revised the DotNetPanel codebase and posted that new code under the new name “WebsitePanel” to SourceForge.NET as an open source project.

WebsitePanel is a line-of-business application and we recognize the benefits of using an open source development model as a more agile and flexible way to meet the growing needs of the web hosting community.

This will enable the hosting and development community to directly contribute to the future of the project, ensuring WebsitePanel’s continued development as an affordable and scalable control panel for Microsoft Windows hosting.

With this change, software developers and hosting providers can now easily integrate WebsitePanel directly into their own offerings and extend the functionality and features to meet their customers’ Windows hosting needs.

For current DotNetPanel customers SMB SAAS Systems Inc. will be providing free community support for a limited time. Future new versions and product updates (including enterprise modules) and bug fixes will be available at no cost to all customers via the WebsitePanel open source project.

We encourage all our customers to move to the WebsitePanel, which will continue to be supported, and participate in WebsitePanel project at SourceForge.NET.

The software is now named WebsitePanel and it still supports a wide range of software for hosting, see the full list of supported software here.

Download the binaries directly from sourceforge.