No mod_rewrite on IIS

Once again I have run smack into the reality that no hosting provider is perfect. While I have been quite happy with my Windows based DailyRazor hosting account I have just discovered an issue that is really bumming me out.  With DailyRazor I can use both PHP and ASP.NET on my sites, which is very cool. I created a new subdomain and developed the site using PHP.  I created a .htaccess file and put in my rewrite commands. When I ran it, however, the rewrite wasn’t working at all. The thing I forgot about is that mod_rewrite is specific to Apache and not PHP.  Since my site is running on IIS there is no mod_rewrite. 

So, I did some research. I did find an IIS addon product called IIS Mod-Rewrite from MicroNovae that looks promising.  I contact DailyRazor support to see if they had anything already installed or suggestions.  Unfortunately they weren’t much help. They said I could buy a license to IIS Mod-Rewrite and they would install it for me (which is certainly a decent option, but I’m not sure I want to buy the license and risk there being issues on a server I can’t administer myself).

I am considering another option, but need to really think it through to see if it would actually work.  I have some ASP.NET sites that are using a free URL Rewriter product. It works pretty good and does the same basic things that mod_rewrite does.  Since I can mix and match PHP and ASP.NET on my sites, I’m thinking I could use that ASP.NET URL rewriter product (which is configured via web.config) to do what I need.  I’m keeping my fingers crossed!