Tom Woolums' Blog

If getting your web site discovered by the masses is your goal, employing Search Engine Optimization (SEO) techniques can be the key. However, if you want to reach a broader base of visitors who are more engaged with your content, optimizing your site for interaction with social networks like Facebook and Twitter, Social Media Optimization (SMO), can be even more significant.

IIS 7.5 Product Information - Describes the features and benefits of IIS 7.5 in Windows Server 2008 R2

Own a Web development or design business with ten or fewer employees needing low cost options for software, support, training, and connections to a variety of business opportunities?  If so, you should check out Microsoft WebsiteSpark; Microsoft’s program for providing Web professionals with new business opportunities through connections with global partners and customers, support and training, along with software tools – with no upfront costs.

Want to help your site achieve higher rankings in the organic listings returned by popular search engines like Bing and Google? Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the answer. SEO techniques and practices are used to help search engines understand what your page contains and ensure it is ranked appropriately in the search results when specific keywords are used to search the Web.

Making PHP applications run efficiently and reliably on IIS 7 is one of our key goals. The IIS team is working with Zend to optimize the performance of PHP on IIS 7 and the results have been remarkable. In addition to performance improvements to PHP and IIS that make it a fast and reliable platform, installing PHP on Windows is quick and easy with Web Platform Installer 2.0 Beta.     

What are Windows services? In a nutshell, they are programs that run in the background performing core operating system functions usually without interaction from users. IIS 7 contains a complementary set of Windows services that work in concert to provide a powerful platform for Web servers. IIS 7’s modular architecture allows you to customize your Web server for a specific role by installing and starting only the services and features required for your Web site and applications.

Application pools, URLs or groups of URLs served by one set of worker processes, have many benefits. They set boundaries that contain applications an prevent them from affecting applications outside of the pool. So if one application fails it won't affect other applications in other pools. They also help with security by restricting an applications access to resources in another pool. Additionally, application pools can be used to improve a sites overall performance if resource intensive applications are contained so they don't affect other applications.

Here's a simplified diagram outlining the steps IIS takes to process HTTP requests.