Review of WebMatrix by Joomladay Sydney (Tim)

So I decided to have a play with Microsoft's WebMatrix, which is a free all in one web development tool. Like any Microsoft product, installation of WebMatrix is a piece of cake, just follow the simple wizard and make sure you've got a decent internet connection as it needs to download a fair bit to get it all up and running.

As Joomla is my CMS of choice, I was pleased to see that the create site from web gallery wizard includes Joomla 1.7, which already has over 277,000 downloads. WebMatrix have a nice simple wizard to install Joomla, it even downloads the source code and sets up the database for you, which I think is great for people who are just starting out and want to get up and running quickly. Interestingly, WebMatrix is a bit stricter in the passwords you can use compared to a manual install of Joomla that allows you to pretty much use anything.

Initially I had some problems with WebMatrix conflicting with my existing xampp install, the web server in WebMatrix wanted to use the same port as my apache server, and the two different mySQL versions didn't play nice together. The MySQL connector for .Net also had some issues with my Windows 7 64bit machine too, I think due to the xampp installation which I did not want to remove, so to give WebMatrix a fair go I had another go and installed in on a clean WinXP machine that had no existing development environments.

Once the software was installed, WebMatrix seems to work well. While it was downloading and installing it showed my current download speed and what step it was up to, but it would have been nice to see how many MB were remaining to be downloaded, or at least a time estimate as to how much longer it was going to take.

After finishing the install wizard for Joomla, I notice that each site

is assigned it's own port, for example http://localhost:7094/     which

makes the url nice and short if you have lots of sites.

Disappointingly, the Joomla version it installed was 1.7.0, and the current version right now is 1.7.2. Of course I can use the one-click update built in to the core, but it would have been nicer if WebMatrix automatically installed the current version.

The files section within WebMatrix allows you to view and edit the source code, complete with line numbers, auto complete and syntax highlighting, so this would be good for anyone who doesn't want to use a complex IDE like eclipse. There's a built in reporting feature that allows you to identify potential issues such as missing tags or attributes or broken links. It also has a built in publish feature that allows you to upload your site onto your live web server, however I didn't try this feature.

WebMatrix seems to be an easy way to install the software for any of the major open source projects, so I can see how it would be good for anyone who wants to dabble in a few different projects but doesn't want to have to invest time in learning all the nuances.

So now I thought I'd have a go at installing Moodle via WebMatrix create site from web gallery. The installation wizard looks the same as when I installed Joomla, however there are some differences in the fields required which are specific to Moodle. I found that some of the error messages in WebMatrix are unnecessary complex, for example when I put in a bad passwordsalt, I get message with a regex string telling me what I should be entering in this field. This might be ok for the hard core geeks, but the average user is just going to be confused.

Unlike installing Joomla, the Moodle install via WebMatrix does not seem to have covered everything, as when I launch Moodle it still guides me through part of it's own install wizard, but at least it's got me up and running quicker than if I'd had to download the install files myself.

I haven't spent a significant amount of time playing with WebMatrix so really these are just my first impressions of the product, but I can see how it would be worth taking a look at if you are planning on trying out a few different open source applications, or if you are looking for an all in one solution. I think there is still some room for improvement, but considering it's free you can't complain too much, and anything that makes trying out open source software easier is a good thing.

 PB Web Development is a small Sydney based web design and development agency specialising in open source solutions using Joomla. PB Web Development works with clients from all around Australia ranging from small and start up businesses to non for profit organisations and Government agencies. 

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