Windows LiveWriter is an easy to use blog editor, that has a rich ecosystem of add-ins, such as the Facebook Like plugin by Guy Burstein.  In order to use the Windows based plug in with the WordPress PHP application, you’ll need to enable remote procedure calls with XML. Otherwise you will see the error “Server Error 405 Occurred. XML-RPC services are disabled on this blog.”

In order to set it up – navigate to the options-writing.php page using your browser and check the box to enable XML-RPC.

WordPress is the most popular PHP application running on Windows.  SlingAlibi currently runs on BlogEngine.NET. We decided to set up a second blog engine with WordPress, running side by side on Windows Server with BlogEngine.NET. 

The steps are super easy thanks to the Web Platform Installer, we’ll walk through them with screenshots below. In essence, it takes 5 steps to host PHP on Windows Server 2008 via WordPress (assuming your hoster supports PHP and MySql):

1. Download WebPI
2. FTP the WordPress files to your webserver
3. Create a blank MySql database
4. Configure the wp-config.php file to point to #2 and #3
5. Launch the wp-admin/install.php file in a browser and finish the setup.

Download Web Platform Installer

The easiest way to pull down WordPress for Windows is through the Web Platform Installer (WebPI).  WebPI will automatically pull down any necessary dependencies such as PHP and MySql:

In the Web Applications tab, you can choose

FTP the Files

This is simple enough to do. I use FileZilla to bring over the WP files, which I have stored in a directory called AntiqueCurator.

Create a MySQL Database

WebHost4Life uses PHPMyAdmin, a popular tool for managing my database. To access it, click on MySqlManager on your control panel. This will launch PHPMyAdmin. Type in a database name and click the Create button.

Edit the WP-Config file with your server and database information

Open up the WP-Config file in Notepad, and just update the user, password, database, and server fields with your data. Be sure to FTP the updated file over to the server.

Run the installation page in a browser

From the server, open the /wp-admin/install.php page and walk through the wizard.