Hosting websites, Node.js, PHP and WordPress on Windows
You can host Node.js, PHP and WordPress on Windows. You do not need IIS, you do not need
iisnode, and you do not need a web.config. Run each app as a Windows Service on a
loopback port,
and put a reverse proxy in front of it for the domain and the HTTPS certificate. That is
the same architecture every Linux host uses — only the names of the parts differ.
These pages explain how to do that by hand, and how WinPanel — a free, self-hosted control panel for Windows Server 2022/2025 and Windows 11 Home or Pro — does it for you, per site, from a web page.
Download the installer · The repository · The wiki · Ask on Discord
The guides
How to host a Node.js app on Windows
For developers and sysadmins. Why the “it’s impossible” and “use iisnode” answers are
wrong, the four ways to do it ranked, a by-hand walkthrough with WinSW and Caddy, and the
eight Windows-specific failures that catch everybody — EADDRINUSE :443, the orphaned
process that keeps a stopped service’s port, long paths, spawn EINVAL.
How to put a website on your own Windows PC or server
For everyone else. What hosting a website actually involves, what it costs, what each word means, and what goes wrong — with no jargon and no command line.
How to host WordPress on Windows
WordPress without IIS or a Linux VM. How WordPress actually runs on Windows — PHP behind a web server, MariaDB for its data — and the one-click install WinPanel does for you.
What WinPanel is
A free control panel for Windows that manages websites, HTTPS, DNS, email and customer accounts from one interface. Static sites, Node.js apps, ASP.NET Core apps, PHP sites and WordPress are all first-class; each runs as a supervised Windows Service, with Caddy in front handling domains, certificates and traffic. WordPress is a one-click install backed by a bundled MariaDB database, with a database browser built in. It supports Windows Server 2022/2025 and Windows 11 Home or Pro — there is no Server-edition requirement.
- Websites — from Git or managed by hand, with builds that swap in only if they start
- WordPress & PHP — one-click WordPress, and PHP sites on a supervised worker pool
- Databases — MariaDB with per-site databases and a built-in browser
- HTTPS — free certificates, renewed automatically, over the DNS challenge
- DNS — Cloudflare records per website, including a reviewed “point this domain here”
- Email — self-hosted mailboxes with quotas, aliases, DKIM and webmail
- People — owner, administrator and customer roles, each with site, disk and mail limits
- Server health — detects and fixes the Windows settings that quietly break Node hosting
It is free and self-hosted, and it runs real commercial sites. Full detail, screenshots and installation instructions are in the README.