Quicksteps to get started with PHP on Windows Azure

The weather in the northern hemisphere is still a little nippy, and if you're like me, you're spending a lot of time indoors with family and friends enjoying the holiday season. If you're spending some of your time catching up and learning new things in the wonderful world of cloud computing, we have a holiday gift of some visual walkthroughs and tutorials on our new "Windows Azure for PHP" center. We pushed up these articles to help you quickly get set up with developing for Windows Azure

"Getting the Windows Azure pre-requisites via the Microsoft Web Platform Installer 2.0" will help you quickly set up your machine in a "few clicks" with all the necessary tools and settings you will need to work with PHP on Windows, IIS and SQL Server Express. We’ve included snapshots of the entire process you will need to get a developer working with the tools built by the “Interoperability at Microsoft” team

"Deploying your first PHP application with the Windows Azure Command-line Tools for PHP" will visually walk you through getting the tool, getting familiar with how it's used and packaging up a simple application for deployment to Windows Azure.

“Deploying your first PHP application to Windows Azure” will build on top of the former articles with walk troughs of how to deploy the application using the Windows Azure management console, both the “classic” and present versions.

I hope this will help you get over the first speed bump of working on Microsoft’s cloud computing platform and we look forward to bringing you more of these based on your feedback and input. So please check them out and let us know how you feel!

Happy Holidays and Happy New Year, 2011!

jas