Hello, I have a quick question I was wondering if the fine folks here at DP could help me with. I am using IIS 6.0 on Win Server 2003 Dedicated Server so I have full root access for installing things. I need to be able to do SEO Friendly Url's on both ASP (not .net) and PHP sites/applications and as we all know, IIS does not have a mod_rewrite module built into it. I have come across two solutions and I am wondering if one is superior than the other? First One: ISAPI_Rewrite by Helicon Tech (http://www.helicontech.com/isapi_rewrite/) is $99. Second One: IIS Mod-Rewrite by Micronovae (http://www.micronovae.com/ModRewrite/ModRewrite.html) is $150. Looking through their FAQ's and Compability lists, they both seem to be the same... at least to me they do. Does any one have experience in either of those two IIS Rewrite applications? Does any one have a preference other as to one versus the other? The price difference is not a concern to me. Having it work properly is the primary focus. Any help any one can provide would be awesome! Thanks.
I've heard about ISAPI Rewrite before though I have never tried either of them before. Helicon does offer a free trial, I suggest you take that for a spin and test to see if your applications and other common apps work with it.
ISAPI Rewrite seems to be the more popular of the two because I can find more write ups about them than I can IIS Mod Rewrite and they both have trial versions. I'm not so much worried that one will work or not because from everything I have read, they should without problems - especially when I see on the Mod Rewrite page how to make sure this works for Drupal, WordPress, and similar. More or less just curious as to whether one is better than the other. There is a $51 price difference and it is that difference in price that has me wondering. If those two are the only options and they are in competition with one another, I would think the prices would be closer together. ISAPI Rewrite might be the more popular because it is simply $51 cheaper than its competition. But does that make them better?
I use IIS Mod-Rewrite, no question. Although they will both serve your SEF urls fine, ISAPI rewrite has been unstable ever since they released v3. Scary crash reports like this fresh one are not uncommon: http://www.helicontech.com/forum/forum_posts-TID-10538.htm Unfortunatelly IIS Mod-Rewrite they don't have a public forum to seek for similar stability issues, but I have neither experienced a hitch ever nor I've found a crash report around the net. ISAPI rewrite is much more popular because it has a free version and also v2 had been the most reliable solution (actually it was the god) for years. Well, just try both and you will tell yourself which is better for you...
Zisto, thanks for your response. Come to think of it, I do remember coming across some crash reports regarding ISAPI Rewrite but it was so late at night, I don't think I registered it in my brain - until just now. Unfortunately, like you said - IIS Mod-Rewrite doesn't have a forum but I did find their web site more helpful with a lot more information relavent to today's popular PHP scripts (ie: WordPress, Drupal, etc). Thank you for sharing with me the fact that you use it without problems. It helps to hear from people actually utilizing this application - to see what their feedback is. I have been kind of leaning torwards IIS Mod-Rewrite to begin with and now that I recall those crash reports (thanks to your reminder), I think I may have made up my mind. I also didn't like how the poster claimed that the uninstall didn't completely uninstall everything. Isn't that the purpose of an uninstall feature?