Sysadmin, Windows Server, IIS, security, website & WordPress, MySQL, optimization
Internet Information Services, the HTTP web service on Windows Server
Windows Server security: When you have just installed your new Windows Server, with or without IIS as web server, it is important to take a few extra security measurements. Securing your (web) server is important to keep hackers out and your data safe. Here are some steps you can take to secure and harden your Windows Server (IIS) web or file server.
Continue reading “3 Important security measurements for Windows Server & IIS”
Windows Server 2016 was finally released last week, meaning we can finally lift the idiotic 260 characters limitation for NTFS paths. In this post I’ll show you how to configure the Enable Win32 long paths setting for the NTFS file system, through Group Policy (a GPO).
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WinCache, or the Windows Cache Extension for PHP, is a PHP accelerator that is used to significantly increase the speed of PHP applications running on Windows Server IIS. Besides increasing the speed of PHP applications, WinCache decreases CPU usage making it a win win situation extension. I’ve described how to run PHP with WinCache on IIS in an earlier post.
Continue reading “The WinCache effect: Save with object caching”
Who said WordPress is slow on Windows Server IIS? Gzip compress and serve WP-Super-Cache or Cache Enabler static HTML files, to supercharge your WordPress blog. Here is how to serve gzip compressed HTML files through Windows Server IIS: create smaller, compressed, static HTML files, that are downloaded faster. This works with WP-Super-Cache and Cache Enabler on IIS!
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Disk cleanup in Windows Server 2012 (R2) using DISM is one of the most popular posts here on Saotn.org. It’s also valid for Windows Server 2016. So apparently, disk space usage is an issue on Windows Server. And that made me wonder: what more ways to clean up disk space in Windows Server are there?
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When you’re installing Windows Server 2016 Technical Preview 5, don’t forget to install KB3157663 before installing any server roles, features, or other products. Installing KB3157663 prior to any other software will fix an error with DISM and Install-WindowsFeature, error code 0x800F081F:
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When you start to play with Windows Server 2016 and IIS 10, you’ll receive an error when you try to install the IIS URL Rewrite Module in IIS. The error occurs because the URL Rewrite Module installer contains an invalid version check for the IIS being used. Here is how to install IIS URL Rewrite Module in IIS 10…
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AppCmd, in combination with WinRM, is the Windows Server IIS systems administrator’s swiss-army knife for his daily routine. This post introduces AppCmd and provides a lot of AppCmd examples. AppCmd.exe is a command-line utility to manage IIS 7+ web servers. It exposes all important IIS server management functionality available through a set of intuitive management objects that can be manipulated through the cmd.exe or PowerShell command-line, or through PowerShell scripts. In this post you’ll find more information about AppCmd usage and examples.
When you use iisnode to host the Node.js blogging software Ghost on your IIS web server, and you set up an SSL certificate for your Ghost website, you may run into too many redirect issues when changing Ghost’s config.js file. This happend to me yesterday, and here is the solution.
Continue reading “Ghost on IIS with HTTPS, how to resolve a “Too many redirects” error”
Windows PowerShell (“PS” for short) is an important tool in Windows Server for administrators. You can use PowerShell for Windows Server administration, software installation, automation, and shell/command-line scripting. Here is a small and simple introduction to Windows PowerShell.
Rewrite and proxy HTTP requests in IIS. In my case scenario, I had to proxy requests on IIS, because a website was moved from web server A to B, and the DNS wasn’t updated yet. All HTTP requests for the moved website are handled in IIS’ Default Web Site; that’s the wildcard host, and the original host no longer existed there. We needed to match our website and proxy those requests to the new IIS web server. This can either be done using a proxy with URL Rewrite, IIS Application Request Routing (ARR), or a .htaccess file handled by Helicon Ape.
The Baidu spider (BaiduSpider user agent) can be a real pain to block, especially since it does not respect a robots.txt as it should. The following IIS URL Rewrite snippet blocks the Baidu spider based on its User-Agent string.
Do you host your WordPress website on Windows Server IIS? Having trouble with your web.config? I often receive questions about how to use a web.config file in WordPress on Windows Server, and which settings are important for a WordPress website. Maybe it’s because I’m a WordPress on IIS enthusiast, so here is my web.config for your convenience (really, it’s not that special).
By default, an IIS application pool (an “AppPool” hereinafter) recycles on a regular time interval of 1740 minutes, or 29 hours. One reason for this time interval is that application pools don’t recycle at the same moment every day (every day at 07.00 for example). However, sometimes you may want to change this regular time interval to specific times. And when you try to configure this in IIS Manager, it gives you an error. Luckily, AppCmd and PowerShell come to the rescue!
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The PHP directive realpath_cache_size sets the size of the realpath cache to be used by PHP. Increasing realpath_cache_size might greatly improve PHP performance, as PHP states: “this value should be increased on systems where PHP opens many files.”
Setting a correct value for PHP realpath_cache_size can greatly improve PHP performance and optimize WordPress – and other CMS’s – websites.
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