Preflight
Before you can begin your PHP installation, you will need to determine if your server has our Fully managed Plesk control panel, or is one of our self or core managed options (without Plesk).- You can determine whether your server has Plesk by logging into https://manage.liquidweb.com.
- Once you have successfully logged in, expand your server from the “Overview” page.
- Next, look to the far right of the “Log into your server” heading, and locate the word “Plesk.”

Note:
As with any software change, we recommend that you have a valid backup before starting this process.
To install PHP using Plesk, you will navigate through the Updates and Upgrades option within Plesk. This method will automatically download and install PHP directly from the Plesk Control Panel. Listed are the steps to install PHP using Plesk:
- Login to Plesk as the admin user.
- Choose Tools & Settings, then select Updates and Upgrades.
- Click Add/Remove Components.
- From the Add and Remove Product Components page you will need to expand the Plesk hosting features. Select install next to the desired PHP version. Click Continue and you will see the installation process finish.
Note:
You should never attempt to make changes to Plesk that are outside the directly supported Plesk options (such as installing PHP).
- From Plesk, choose Domains on the left-hand side.
- Select your domain name.
- Choose Hosting Settings.
- Under Web Scripting and Statistics check the box to Enable PHP.
- Select the proper PHP version next to PHP support.
- Click OK.
There are several ways to install PHP on Windows Server 2016 (without Plesk). Since the manual method is more complex and requires manual configuration to IIS, the recommended approach is using the Web Platform Installer. The Web Platform Installer will automatically download PHP and will configure the IIS handlers for you. To install PHP using the Web Platform Installer, follow the steps provided below:
- Connect to your server using RDP with an Administrator user.
- Open Internet Information Systems (inetmgr.exe).
- Select the server name (under “Start Page” on the left-hand side of IIS).
- Choose “Get New Web Platform Components” from the Actions pane.
- If the Web Platform Installer is not already installed you will be directed to a website to install the Web Platform Installer.
- Download and run the Web Platform Installer.
- You can now select “Get New Web Platform Components” from the Actions pane and proceed with step 5.
- If the Web Platform Installer extension is already installed, it will open.
- If the Web Platform Installer is not already installed you will be directed to a website to install the Web Platform Installer.
- From the Web Platform Installer search for “PHP 7”.
- Select the version of PHP that you wish to install and click “Add”, “Install”, “I Accept”
- After the installation completes click “Finish”.

Once you have PHP installed, the next step is to verify that PHP is working correctly. You can do this by adding any PHP script to the website and manually navigating to the page in your browser. The following steps explicitly explain the process of how to create a PHP page under a site in IIS. This process will then result in the output of information about PHP’s configuration. Commonly referred to as a “PHP info page,” we show you the steps needed to create one:
Note:
A PHP info page can contain sensitive data about versioning and enabled components. While creating a temporary page is typically ok, after use, we recommend you delete the page as soon as possible.
- Connect to your server using RDP with an Administrator user.
- Open Internet Information Systems (inetmgr.exe).
- Expand the server name (under “Start Page” on the left-hand side of IIS).
- Expand “Sites”.
- Right click the site name and choose “Explore”.
- Within the directory that opened create a file named phpinfo.php with the following contents:
<?php phpinfo(); ?>
- Navigate to the site specifying the phpinfo.php we created. Example : http://domain.com/phpinfo.php
- If everything went well you should be shown a page that displays the PHP version and other information.
- Delete the phpinfo.php file we created earlier.
Now that PHP is installed and working correctly you are ready to upload your code or get started with one of many PHP based content management systems of your choice.