Enabling Search Engine Friendly (SEF) URLs on IIS/IIS7

If you have a server running IIS 7 and PHP, you can take advantage of IIS's own internal URL rewriting by using a web.config file similar to the one listed below.

You can create the file yourself or use the GUI in the IIS7 Manager. You can import .htaccess rules using the GUI/wizard.

This functionality depends on the presence of the IIS URL Rewrite Module, which does not come with Windows. It is a free download and a Microsoft product.

GUI

If the IIS URL Rewrite module is installed, your website manager will have a tool for URL Rewrite, visible in the IIS Manager's view of your site's configurable IIS modules. The interface is largely self-explanatory. Regular expressions, wildcards or exact matches are all supported.

In the Joomla config turn on both the SEF and Apache mod_rewrite. Next create a rule under IIS URL Rewrite:

Pattern field: ^([^/]+)/?$

Ignore case ON

Action type: Rewrite

Rewrite URL: index.php/

web.config

This has been tested on Joomla 1.5 with IIS 7 on Windows Server 2008 with no problems so far. For more information on converting .htaccess to web.config, see Translate .htaccess Content to IIS web.config

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<configuration>
    <system.webServer>
        <rewrite>
            <rules>
                <clear />
                <rule name="Common Exploit Blocking" stopProcessing="true">
                    <match url="^(.*)$" />
                    <conditions logicalGrouping="MatchAny">
                        <add input="{QUERY_STRING}" pattern="mosConfig_[a-zA-Z_]{1,21}(=|\%3D)" />
                        <add input="{QUERY_STRING}" pattern="base64_encode.*\(.*\)" />
                        <add input="{QUERY_STRING}" pattern="(\&lt;|%3C).*script.*(\>|%3E)" />
                        <add input="{QUERY_STRING}" pattern="GLOBALS(=|\[|\%[0-9A-Z]{0,2})" />
                        <add input="{QUERY_STRING}" pattern="_REQUEST(=|\[|\%[0-9A-Z]{0,2})" />
                    </conditions>
                    <action type="Redirect" url="index.php" appendQueryString="false" redirectType="SeeOther" />
                </rule>
                <rule name="Joomla Search Rule" stopProcessing="true">
                    <match url="(.*)" ignoreCase="true" />
                    <conditions logicalGrouping="MatchAll">
                        <add input="{URL}" pattern="^/search.php" ignoreCase="true" />
                    </conditions>
                    <action type="Rewrite" url="/index.php?option=com_content&amp;view=article&amp;id=4" />
                </rule>
                <rule name="Joomla Main Rewrite Rule" stopProcessing="true">
                    <match url="(.*)" ignoreCase="true" />
                    <conditions logicalGrouping="MatchAll">
                        <add input="{URL}" pattern="(/[^.]*|\.(php|html?|feed|pdf|raw))$" />
                        <add input="{REQUEST_FILENAME}" matchType="IsFile" negate="true" />
                        <add input="{REQUEST_FILENAME}" matchType="IsDirectory" negate="true" />
                    </conditions>
                    <action type="Rewrite" url="index.php/" />
                </rule>
            </rules>
        </rewrite>
        <caching>
            <profiles>
                <add extension=".php" policy="DisableCache" kernelCachePolicy="DisableCache" />
            </profiles>
        </caching>
    </system.webServer>
</configuration>