Setting up PHP on IIS

All you non-techies probably don't want to read this post. But techies may appreciate it.

Setting up PHP and other open source products on Microsoft's webserver, IIS, has always been ... how shall I put it? ... a challenge, you know like trying to climb Mount Everest with two broken legs. So when I saw a link to "Setting up FastCGI for PHP", I was a little sceptical about my chances of success.

When I got to the page I saw that it had a video presentation on how to do it. I watched it and it seemed incredibly simple. I knew it couldn't be that easy. I just knew that when I tried it there would be problems. There was just no way it would work as advertised.

But it did! It WAS that simple. I now have PHP running happily on IIS on my Vista laptop. There was not one hitch, not one problem, not one weird error message, not one gotcha!

I have to say also that the new IIS 7 Manager UI is sooooooo much better than anything I've seen before. I haven't done a lot of web stuff recently, the last IIS I dealt with was 5, so if 6 had this same manager then just switch the 7 for a 6 in my comments. So far, IIS 7 looks like MS finally hit the mark on making it easy to find where things are so you can manage IIS easily.

PGP Freeware still exists

If you've tried to find the PGP Freeware version recently you'll know that it is not easy to find. No matter which search engine you use you won't find a place to download the freeware version. But there is one. They just renamed it to "Free PGP Desktop Trial Software". You have to read more on the page to see that, "You now receive all product functionality for 30 days before the product reverts to functionality available in former PGP Freeware."

I'm guessing they make it hard so people will give up and pay for it. I think that is silly. If they would make it clear that this is the freeware version and that you get the full version for 30 days then people are going to download it and try out the extra features and after 30 days a good number are going to want to keep the extra features. But that won't happen if you obscure the fact that the "trial" version is in fact the "freeware" version.