Newbie Installation Guide: Windows w/ Plesk

AntVincent

### How to install Flarum on Windows Plesk (IIS) 😄

As a hobbyist sysadmin, compared to most of the folks on here, I am relatively inexperienced. With support from @katos and @[deleted] (big thank you again chaps), I was able to overcome a couple of 'gotchas' getting Flarum working on a Windows IIS setup.

This tutorial assumes you have:

Fully funcational Plesk Obsidian 18.0.28 Update #3 running on IIS
URL Rewrite Installed: https://www.iis.net/downloads/microsoft/url-rewrite
Git and Composer extensions installed
Note: You do not need to install Composer as outlined here: https://docs.flarum.org/install.html#installing

Step One: Install the Flarum Repository

Click Websites & Domains and find your domain
Click GIT
Remote Git repository field enter: https://github.com/flarum/flarum.git
Click OK

Step Two: Compile using PHP Composer

Head back to Website & Domains and find your domain
Click PHP Composer
Click Scan (this may take a couple of minutes to complete)
Click Update (this may take a couple of minutes to complete)
Click Install (this may take a couple of minutes to complete)

Step Three: Change Domain Document Root
Note: This is a really important step as it will prevent exposing private files on your server

Head back to Website & Domains and find your domain
Click Hosting & DNS
Click Hosting Settings
Change Document root: from httpdocs to httpdocs\public
Click Apply

Step Four: Create web.config

Head to your domains httpdocs\public folder
Create a new file (add the below code)
Save file as: web.config

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<configuration>
  <system.webServer>
        <defaultDocument>
            <files>
                <clear />
                <add value="Index.php" />
            </files>
        </defaultDocument>
        <rewrite>
            <rules>
                <rule name="Imported Rule 1" stopProcessing="true">
                    <match url="/\.git" ignoreCase="false" />
                    <action type="CustomResponse" url="/" statusCode="403" statusReason="Forbidden" statusDescription="Forbidden" />
                </rule>
                <rule name="Imported Rule 2" stopProcessing="true">
                    <match url="^auth\.json$" ignoreCase="false" />
                    <action type="CustomResponse" url="/" statusCode="403" statusReason="Forbidden" statusDescription="Forbidden" />
                </rule>
                <rule name="Imported Rule 3" stopProcessing="true">
                    <match url="^composer\.(lock|json)$" ignoreCase="false" />
                    <action type="CustomResponse" url="/" statusCode="403" statusReason="Forbidden" statusDescription="Forbidden" />
                </rule>
                <rule name="Imported Rule 4" stopProcessing="true">
                    <match url="^config.php$" ignoreCase="false" />
                    <action type="CustomResponse" url="/" statusCode="403" statusReason="Forbidden" statusDescription="Forbidden" />
                </rule>
                <rule name="Imported Rule 5" stopProcessing="true">
                    <match url="^flarum$" ignoreCase="false" />
                    <action type="CustomResponse" url="/" statusCode="403" statusReason="Forbidden" statusDescription="Forbidden" />
                </rule>
                <rule name="Imported Rule 6" stopProcessing="true">
                    <match url="^storage/(.*)?$" ignoreCase="false" />
                    <action type="CustomResponse" url="/" statusCode="403" statusReason="Forbidden" statusDescription="Forbidden" />
                </rule>
                <rule name="Imported Rule 7" stopProcessing="true">
                    <match url="^vendor/(.*)?$" ignoreCase="false" />
                    <action type="CustomResponse" url="/" statusCode="403" statusReason="Forbidden" statusDescription="Forbidden" />
                </rule>
                <rule name="Imported Rule 8" stopProcessing="true">
                    <match url="^" ignoreCase="false" />
                    <conditions logicalGrouping="MatchAll">
                        <add input="{REQUEST_FILENAME}" matchType="IsFile" ignoreCase="false" negate="true" />
                        <add input="{REQUEST_FILENAME}" matchType="IsDirectory" ignoreCase="false" negate="true" />
                    </conditions>
                    <action type="Rewrite" url="index.php" appendQueryString="true" />
                </rule>
            </rules>
        </rewrite>
  </system.webServer>
</configuration>

Step Five: Create Database

Click Databases
Click your domain
Click Add Database button
Enter preferred database name, username and password
Be sure to select your domain from the 'Related Site' drop down
Click OK

Step Six: Reset your domain server pool

Head back to Website & Domains and find your domain
Click Hosting & DNS
Click Dedicated IIS Application Pool For Website
Click Recycle button

Step Seven: Done

Browse to your domain www.domain.com
Populate with the database details
Pick your admin name and password
Done & enjoy

Hope that helps 🙂

Ant

[deleted]

AntVincent brilliant guide. Thanks for posting this. It'll go a long way to helping others.

katos

I'll just echo what [deleted] said.
Brilliant write-up @AntVincent - Thanks for supporting the Flarum community with this tutorial, it's hugely appreciated! 🙂

tankerkiller125

I've created a PR to add the web.config file into the default install. Huge thanks to all of you guys for all the initial work, I've only changed the rule names to be a bit more descriptive 😉 flarum/flarum66

claytonny

Thank you for this "web.config", it helped a lot.

ART994

claytonny now it is automatically created

ART994

Thanks for the instructions, everything is great. but how to update plugins? when you click update, they are not updated, only installed