Dynamic Site Learning

Hi there, yes, Lynda.com is quite good, but the best way I believe is to grab a copy of Ben Forta and Raymond Camden's book

Adobe Coldfusion 8 web application construction kit
(Getting started)

And to read up on the Blogs of Raymond Camden (coldfusionjedi.com), Sean Corfield (corfield.org), Ben Nadel (kinkysolutions.com) and others (they all cross-link and comment so you'll quickly find the real experts - fewer than for PHP perhaps, but more concentrated knowledge I find, and most helpful).

CF8 will let you deliver impressive websites a lot quicker than with PHP methinks, and you can always integrate some PHP solution with CF as well if you now have to. As far as hosting costs are concerned, yes, CF might be a little bit more expensive, but you can find reasonable and even really inexpensive hosting if you can not justify your own CF 8 Standard License for your own box at the moment.

Whilst I agree with comments like "something between CF8 Standard and Enterprise" would be nice, we find CF8 Standard has improved dramatically in performance, and easily outperforms our previous CF7 Enterprise on most things. Of course, to be fair, we also run a way faster server now, but still, CF8 Standard gives you "plenty of bang for your money.

Enjoy CF!
Jonas

The best way to learn is to go to a school that teaches it. But it's not the only way.

I like the SAMS books, Teach Yourself Something in x Time Units. I've seen one for php but not for Cold Fusion.

You didn't mention what you know about databases. They are essential to both cf and php. If you don't know data modelling, learn it. It is the most valueable thing you can learn if you want to do it well.