WCMP (Windows Caddy MariaDB PHP)¹

Tool for setting up a Caddy server with PHP and MariaDB support on Windows.

Warning

WCMP is still in active development

Please note that WCMP was designed for development purposes. You could try to use it in production.

If you find any bugs or have any suggestions, please open an issue at issues.

About

After some research, I realized that there was no way to set up a Caddy server with PHP support without much effort. That''s why I created this repository. Later MariaDB server support was integrated too.

flowchart LR
       User-- HTTP/HTTPS -->Caddy
       Caddy-- "php_fastcgi" -->PHP-CGI
       PHP-CGI-- Result -->Caddy
       PHP-CGI<-.->MariaDB[("\nMariaDB-Server\n(SQL-Server)")]

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The script is pretty advanced and tries to do everything automatically. If it fails at any point, it will tell you what happened.

WCMP comes with default configuration files for all components. You can change them later if you want.

Installation

Prerequisites: PowerShell, 64-bit Windows, internet access.
Administrator rights are only required if you include Windows Services (default).

$tmp = "$env:TEMP\Invoke-WCMPSetup.ps1"
Invoke-WebRequest -UseBasicParsing -Uri "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Hope-IT-Works/WCMP/main/src/Invoke-WCMPSetup.ps1" -OutFile $tmp
powershell -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -File $tmp -Path "C:\ProgramData\WCMP"

The script always fetches the latest versions of all components and lets you choose from available PHP versions.

Installation Parameters

Parameter	Type	Default	Description
-Path	string	current directory	Installation directory
-Headless	switch	off	Non-interactive mode - skips all prompts
-Force	switch	off	In headless mode: continue past warnings instead of aborting
-SkipWinSW	switch	off	Skip Windows Service installation (portable mode)
-SkipPHP	switch	off	Skip PHP installation
-SkipMariaDB	switch	off	Skip MariaDB installation
-PHPPort	int	9000	Port for PHP-CGI
-MariaDBPort	int	3306	Port for MariaDB

Examples

# Standard installation with Windows Services
.\Invoke-WCMPSetup.ps1 -Path "C:\ProgramData\WCMP"

# Portable installation without Windows Services (uses Start-WCMP.bat / Stop-WCMP.bat)
.\Invoke-WCMPSetup.ps1 -Path "C:\WCMP" -SkipWinSW

# Installation with custom ports
.\Invoke-WCMPSetup.ps1 -Path "C:\WCMP" -PHPPort 9001 -MariaDBPort 3307

# Silent installation (no prompts, abort on warnings)
.\Invoke-WCMPSetup.ps1 -Path "C:\WCMP" -Headless

# Silent installation (no prompts, continue past warnings)
.\Invoke-WCMPSetup.ps1 -Path "C:\WCMP" -Headless -Force

# Installation without MariaDB
.\Invoke-WCMPSetup.ps1 -Path "C:\WCMP" -SkipMariaDB

Running WCMP

With Windows Services (default)

Services are installed to start automatically with Windows. You can manage them manually:

Start-Service WCMP_Caddy, WCMP_PHP, WCMP_MariaDB
Stop-Service  WCMP_Caddy, WCMP_PHP, WCMP_MariaDB

Without Windows Services (portable)

When installed with -SkipWinSW, two batch files are created in the installation directory:

Start-WCMP.bat   - starts Caddy, PHP-CGI and MariaDB in separate console windows
Stop-WCMP.bat    - stops all three processes

Double-click or run from the command line:

C:\WCMP\Start-WCMP.bat
C:\WCMP\Stop-WCMP.bat

Updating

The -Update parameter downloads and replaces the latest binaries of all installed components without touching configuration files or the MariaDB data directory.

.\Invoke-WCMPSetup.ps1 -Update -Path "C:\ProgramData\WCMP"

If Windows Services are detected, they are stopped before and restarted after the update automatically (requires Administrator).

If WinSW was not installed initially but -SkipWinSW is omitted during update, the services are registered automatically.

Update Parameters

Parameter	Description
-Update	Enable update mode
-Path	Path to existing installation
-SkipPHP	Skip updating PHP
-SkipMariaDB	Skip updating MariaDB
-SkipWinSW	Skip updating WinSW

Ports are not changed during -Update. Use -Reconfigure to change ports.

Reconfiguring Ports

To change ports after installation without reinstalling:

.\Invoke-WCMPSetup.ps1 -Reconfigure -Path "C:\ProgramData\WCMP" -PHPPort 9001 -MariaDBPort 3307

Warning: -Reconfigure patches configuration files using pattern matching. If you have manually customized any of the files below (e.g. added multiple php_fastcgi entries in the Caddyfile or changed the MariaDB config), those changes may be overwritten or produce unexpected results. Back up your configs before running -Reconfigure.

This patches all affected configuration files in-place:

File	What is changed
caddy\Caddyfile	php_fastcgi port
php\winsw_php.xml	-b argument
mariadb\bin\winsw_mariadb.xml	--port argument
Start-WCMP.bat	both ports

If Windows Services are installed, they are restarted automatically (requires Administrator).

Reconfigure Parameters

Parameter	Description
-Reconfigure	Enable reconfigure mode
-Path	Path to existing installation
-PHPPort	New PHP-CGI port
-MariaDBPort	New MariaDB port
-SkipPHP	Skip patching PHP configs
-SkipMariaDB	Skip patching MariaDB configs

Parameter Compatibility

Some parameters are mutually exclusive or have no effect in combination:

Combination	Result
-Update + -Reconfigure	Error - use one at a time
-Force without -Headless	Warning - -Force has no effect
-PHPPort/-MariaDBPort + -Update	Warning - ports are ignored during update

Documentation

Service	Documentation	Default Ports
Caddy	caddyserver.com/docs	80 HTTP · 443 HTTPS · 2019 Config-API
MariaDB	mariadb.com/kb	3306 SQL
PHP	php.net/manual	9000 PHP-CGI

FAQ

Is it portable?

Use -SkipWinSW during setup for a portable installation. Start and stop WCMP using Start-WCMP.bat and Stop-WCMP.bat in the installation directory.

Why MariaDB?

MariaDB is an open-source fork of MySQL. MariaDB provides better performance and more features than MySQL.
More information on this topic

Footnotes

1. e.g. LAMP (Linux Apache MySQL PHP) ↩