WordPress claims to have the famous 5-minute installation, but where is it? Attempting to install WordPress in IIS on a modern Windows server is a ridiculously confusing process for the uninitiated. If you go to wordpress.com you're invited to create an account and a hosted site. If you go to wordpress.org you may eventually stumble upon the Installing WordPress page which tells you to unzip the raw files, create a database, rename a file and run the famous installation process. However, the Minimum Requirements specify PHP and MySQL, and without those you can't even get started.
If you go searching for installers for PHP and MySQL you will find many versions with conflicting or confusing information. The PHP installer I found was simply a zip with no clues about how to integrate PHP into IIS. The MySQL installer wizard offers dozens of optional components and you have no idea which ones are required to support WordPress.
After hours of searching and stumbling around I eventually found this Install WordPress for Windows page that suggests you install Microsoft Web Platform Installer 5.0, go to the Applications tab, Add WordPress, click Install and follow the reasonably sensible instructions. The installation adds a PHP handler to IIS and configures a MySQL database. The first time you visit the index.php page the famous 5-minute installation begins and you will be asked some more questions, after which you login to the site as an administrator where you can manage the site and its contents from the Dashboard page.
So overall, the trick is to use the Web Platform Installer to bootstrap the whole process. I suspect there are different ways of achieving the same result.
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