FastCGI for IIS 6.0 is released on Download Center

Just over a year after the we first announced the FastCGI (see the first ever blog post about it: https://mvolo.com/blogs/serverside/archive/2006/09/29/Making-PHP-rock-on-Windows_2F00_IIS.aspx), the final RTM version is here!

You can download directly from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=2d481579-9a7c-4632-b6e6-dee9097f9dc5&displaylang=en.

Lets see what it took to get here:

0) Sept 2006:
        We first present the upcoming PHP collaboration efforts at a Web developer summit in Redmond. 
        It gets picked up by press and we announce the upcoming efforts to build the FastCGI support.

First blog post: Making PHP rock on Windows/IIS

1) OCT 30, 2006:
        Technical Preview 1 released
        We announce the FastCGI project and collaboration with Zend at PHPCon

Bill's PHPCon demo: PHP on IIS7 w/FastCGI
TP1 release announcement: The PHP / FastCGI Technical Preview is Live!

2) JAN 31, 2006:
        Technical Preview 2 released, fixing many bugs found by the PHP community

TP2 release announcement: Turbo-charge your PHP applications with IIS FastCGI Technical Preview 2

— We get FastCGI into Windows Server 2008 —

3) APR 25, 2007:
        Windows Server 2008 beta 3 releases, with FastCGI for IIS 7.0 built-in

FastCGI built-in in Windows Server 2008: The latest on the FastCGI project and PHP support on IIS

4) SEPT 24, 2007:
        FastCGI for IIS 6.0 Go-Live released, several hosters begin to deploy FastCGI

GoLive announcement: Deploy your PHP applications today with the IIS 6 FastCGI Go-Live release!

5) Today, NOV 12, 2007:
        FastCGI for IIS 6.0 RTMs!

Coming soon:

6) FEB 27, 2008:
       FastCGI for IIS 7.0 RTMs in Windows Server 2008 / Vista SP1 

This has been a pretty crazy ride for everyone involved.  I remember working many a night and weekend before the TP1 release, writing the first installation scripts for the technical preview release, finding bugs, writing the articles for IIS.NET, and of course lots of arguing with Rick and Wade in design meetings 🙂 

The FastCGI project has been the first out of band project for the IIS team to fully engage the community during development, and the quality of the project benefitted handsomely for it.

Since then, we've come quite a long way to opening up the IIS platform to many third party application frameworks with the FastCGI support.  Frameworks like PHP can now enjoy full production support and much greater performance than ever possible in the past. 

For IIS 7.0, FastCGI is just the beginning – with the power of Integrated ASP.NET, applications can now leverage IIS and ASP.NET features to power up any application framework technologies, and manage their sites containing those diverse techologies in a consistent manner.  Next month, look for much more on this subject.

Mai-Lan has the FastCGI RTM release details at http://blogs.iis.net/mailant/archive/2007/11/12/rtm-of-fastcgi-for-iis6.aspx.

In the meantime, download the release and head over to www.iis.net/fastcgi to learn more about getting started!  To learn more about the release matrix for FastCGI at the moment and what the options are if you are not running Windows Server 2003, head over to What you absolutely need to know to host PHP applications on IIS 6 and IIS 7.

Thanks,

Mike