ISAPI_Rewrite - IIS gets some needed Apache smarts.

So, you develop for Microsoft's Internet Information Server by default or by choice. (As you can tell I am going down a geeky road - moms and normal people look away...)

At my work, I am constantly having to create a user friendly URLs that somebody can type in and then the server redirects to some inane URL that causes cookies to be written and gets tracked for analysis. If you are web developer, you understand. I was so happy to find ISAPI_Rewrite a while back from Helicon. This gem behaves just like mod_rewrite using regular expressions in Apache for the redirection. I do not have to dump the last 7 years of development for IIS - this is a good thing. And Helicon has a free (as in beer) version that is not site specific, but it hangs over all sites under IIS on the box. I really cannot believe it is free. There is a pay version that allows different configurations for each site on the box - well beyond worth the money if you have a serious business and have any need for this.

They also have a very good "Regular Expression Test Utility" that, if you find regular expressions semi-enigmatic like I do, then this utility will help you nail them down.

Helicon - thank you. Seriously.