Sometimes you need ARM resources to be applied only when a template is deployed for the first time. Learn how ARM conditions can achieve this goal.

Sometimes you will find that you need a cloud environment for working on a Visual Studio project. Consider setting up a temporary Azure VM.

Originally published in 2012, this was my first published article, a guest post for MSDN covering some of the tricks we found for optimizing and improving the performance of PHP with classic Web and Worker Roles on Azure. With the original post having since been removed from MSDN, the contents are now posted here for anyone interested in understanding this older Azure technology.