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Web Platform Installer - End of support and sunsetting the product/application feed
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Chris Sfanos
26
Reputation points Microsoft Employee
From very humble beginnings in late 2008 (!), the Web Platform Installer (WebPI) has helped bootstrap countless machines with a wide array of Microsoft platform products and open source (OSS) web applications. WebPI was Microsoft's first big foray into OSS web apps (Umbraco, DotNetNuke and the like) and even installed non-Microsoft products like MySQL and PHP. It's greatest strength was it's ability to detect and install the correct versions of the myriad of dependencies needed to setup a server of desktop machine. No longer did you need to search for the various versions of the SQL client, .NET Framework or any other underlying component - WebPI handled it all for you seamlessly and was always up to date with the latest and greatest.
WebPI was the launching pad for WebMatrix and also made it easy to get the various versions of the Azure SDK for .NET before it became directly integrated into Visual Studio. Today it's updated much less frequently, but several teams continue to leverage it's easy of use and light-weight footprint to help deploy their products to a wide set of customers.
Alas, products have a finite lifecycle and the time has come to both end support for WebPI and to wind down the product and application feeds. The following list below details the key dates in the process so you can plan accordingly.
June 1st ,2021 - Updates to the Web Application Gallery catalog ended. In an emergency, we will make security updates for applications or remove them as needed
July 1st, 2022 - Product support via Microsoft Support Services officially ends. WebPI is classified as a tool in the Microsoft support lexicon and requires a 12 month notification before support is ended
July 1st, 2022 - Product updates to the Product catalog will end. The feed will be locked and no changes will be made
December 31st, 2022 - The WebPI feed will be removed from the servers and the product installers will be pulled from the Microsoft download center
I've worked on WebPI since somtime in 2010 and have been the last person keeping the lights on for at least 5 years, so this is a tough post for me to write, but the time has come to sunset the product.
The most common question I get when the WebPI end of support comes up:
Q: What if I still need something from WebPI to maintain a legacy system?
A: Take a look at creating a WebPI Offline Feed - you can setup a mini WebPI feed and installer repository locally that will allow you to continue to deploy products to legacy machines. Remember to download and store copies of the WebPI installer itself (both x86 and x64) as those will be removed per the dates above.
I hope you found WebPI a beneficial product and it made your product install experience just a little bit easier. I've enjoyed immensely being a part of it for all these years!
Thanks
Chris Sfanos
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Lex Li (Microsoft) 4,662 Reputation points Microsoft Employee2021-06-09T23:51:07.057+00:00 Thanks for your hard work, Chris :)
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K Dovale 1 Reputation point2021-07-06T09:59:43.63+00:00 I see that some of the features are failing trying to do an offline version, ie packages like wordpress, etc are failing because of the php requirements, etc, is there a way to create a feed with packages like wordpress, joomla, and a few others ? Can you maybe help me in this directions, or an alternative, where can I get hold of the old packages, so I can manually update them myself.packages
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Frank van Gilluwe 1 Reputation point2022-07-06T20:36:07.3+00:00 With the abandonment of Web Platform Installer, does this mean IIS is also being abandoned? Seems crazy to kill WebPI and make us go back to the dark ages of handling package loading manually and all the headaches it creates. WebPI really makes adding frameworks so much easier.
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Lex Li (Microsoft) 4,662 Reputation points Microsoft Employee
2022-10-12T15:59:44.477+00:00 The dark age has long passed, and community based solutions like Chocolatey or Microsoft driven winget are out there to serve. Compared to them, WebPI is old and inactive, so no doubt it's phasing out.
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Ed Eaglehouse 6 Reputation points2022-06-03T16:09:58.333+00:00 Thanks for your efforts to create and support this tool! What will be its replacement?
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Mike Russo 16 Reputation points2022-10-12T15:26:23.903+00:00 There is no replacement. That would require Microsoft to pay someone to maintain it, and that money has already been earmarked for a middle-manager's coke dealer and stripper expenses.
Seriously, that money is being spent on something that will not make any of our lives easier. That's why this is so annoying.
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Lex Li (Microsoft) 4,662 Reputation points Microsoft Employee
2022-10-12T16:00:51.787+00:00 You can switch to community based solutions like Chocolatey or Microsoft driven winget, which have been there for a long while.
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Lex Li (Microsoft) 4,662 Reputation points Microsoft Employee
2022-10-12T16:07:08.287+00:00 You can only draw a conclusion like that only if you are not willing to learn the alternatives out there. They existed long before Web PI phased out.
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Mike Russo 16 Reputation points
2022-10-12T17:42:04.177+00:00 I actually did forget about that, but it should have been mentioned in the blog post as a replacement. I'll have to give it a go on the next server.
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Mike Russo 16 Reputation points
2022-10-12T17:43:02.397+00:00 Hey it's not like I haven't seen the effects of Microsoft's change in priorities first hand in regards to quality of Windows and Office products lately. But you are right, these are definitely better alternatives than WinPI.
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Terry Naudé 26 Reputation points2023-02-01T15:54:53.89+00:00 So my question is, what is the replacement?
And I guess a follow on question, since "Web Platform installer" appears as an option in IIS Manager, will Microsoft remove that as an Icon and put a replacement option that works in it's place?