I know I have a lot in the queue to write about the wedding over the weekend, but some other pressing matters have come up regarding this web server.
I've been on the lookout for Windows servers at Rackshack for quite some time. I need a single Windows server on which to run ASP for my RPG Wire site. This is inconvenient because of the ludicrous amount I spend on unlimited Linux hosting with Rackshack. It is really annoying to have to switch between the two hosts.
Anyway, last week I noticed that the Rackshack-located server went down for about 6 hours. This is the first time this has happened in a year. Since Rackshack offers unmanaged hosting, I had no way of bringing the site back up without sending a message to their 24-hour support to have someone walk to the server and reboot it.
Regardless of the problem that caused the server to fail, I went into panic mode and started looking around on Rackshack's site. There, I found what I had been looking for all along: Windows Servers.
And not just Windows servers, but Windows 2003 servers. So I've been trying for the past couple of days to convert everything over to the Windows platform.
Everything should still run as normal, since I'm still going to run PHP an MySQL, but there are some strange little differences here and there. For instance, Windows 2003 Web Server comes with nothing. I mean, nothing. There isn't even an email server.
So I have installed MailEnable. MailEnable is a cool mail server. It's not as great as a couple of other packages I've seen (like @Mail, WOW), but it's good enough for my purposes. The Pro version includes a webmail feature that will be very useful, since it not only lets you access your email, but lets you administer the email accounts via the web.
Another thing that's missing is mod_rewrite. If you're not into Apache hosting, you'll have no idea what I'm talking about. Actually, you'll probably have no idea what I'm talking about no matter what.
Basically, it lets me fake out your browser by supplying the results of a dynamically generated page when you make a request for what you think is a static page. All of those URLs on Asymptomatic that look like 232.htm are actually dynamically generated pages, and the server kind of reroutes your request to the appropriate script.
To enable mod_rewrite features on IIS (the Windows web server) I had to install ISAPI_Rewrite. It essentially does the same thing, but it has a couple of extra features. Features that I have not gotten to work yet. But the basic functionality that I need is there.
Another thing that I'm having difficulty with is the PHP spelling component. Apparently, there is no such thing available for Windows. What a rip-off! Why doesn't someone make a simple PHP extension for Windows that does spelling? Sheesh.
I'm going to have to install some firewall software soon. Although I've patched my server completely via Windows Update, I think it's probably best to adopt a "multi-layered" security strategy. But I certainly don't want to contract any of the worms that are going around.
I have a couple of major sites to go in the conversion, yet. I want Asymptomatic to run on the new server for a couple of days. I've already had someone connect from Indonesia, so the DNS entries seem to have propagated. Hopefully, things will be running smoothly before the end of the month and I'll be able to slim back down to a single server. Woot!
