In my last post, we made 4 different pages that all did one thing, tell you your external IP address, now lets introduce the power of Microsoft Windows Azure!

Azure will let us run any or all of the 4 pages I showed you how to make earlier! Yes even PHP!

We will do this in 8 easy steps!

1. Signup for a Windows Azure trial (or in my case active my AWESOME MSDN subscription's Azure Subscription)
2. Go to the account management portal, and signup for the Website Beta Program http://account.windowsazure.com
3. Once accepted for the Web Site program (you will get an email, or just keep checking the management portal), go to the management portal, http://manage.windowsazure.com/ and create a new website using the Quick Create option. I called mine whatismyip, which will result in the FQDN of http://whatismyip.azurewebsites.net
4. Open the dashboard for your website, select "Reset Deployment Credentials". Enter appropriate username and password.
5. Still in the dashboard, make a note of the "Deployment User" and "FTP Hostname"
6. Open up your favorite FTP client, the server name will be the previously noted hostname, username will be the previously noted down username, password will be what you specified earlier.
7. Copy up the file or files for the IP returning page that you wish to use, I uploaded all 4!
8. Use the pages!

Here are mine:

http://whatismyip.azurewebsites.net/getip.php

http://whatismyip.azurewebsites.net/getip.aspx

http://whatismyip.azurewebsites.net/getip.ashx

http://whatismyip.azurewebsites.net/getip.asp