Skip to main content
N
nathans77
Participating Frequently
April 18, 2007
Question

Interested in CF

  • April 18, 2007
  • 7 replies
  • 862 views
I am familiar with Dreamweaver. The languages I do know are ASP, and PHP (still learning). I also know MS SQL, and MySQL (still learning). I'm quite pleased with PHP/MySQL. I'm wanting my church to go to that so I can develop some dynamic sites and somewhat remove me from content updates. Anyways, I've looked through job openings and a majority of them are ASP.NET, then CF, then PHP. I tried ASP.NET, but it was confusing, and I still don't get it. But plain ASP and PHP I can comprehend. Maybe .NET is not one of my cups of tea. I've thought about adding CF to my programming languages. I have some questions.

Compared to ASP, ASP.NET, and PHP, how difficult is it to learn?
Am I able to download a development server software?
My test machine is a WinME (755MHz, 500MB RAM, 20GB HD), will CF server run on that?

I'm sure I'll have more, but that's all I can think of for now.

Thanks,
Nate
This topic has been closed for replies.

7 replies

tclaremont
tclaremont
Inspiring
April 20, 2007
When I said "this presumes you have a good working knowlege of database design", I meant that I recommend Ben's book first IF you already have a good working knowlege of database design.

If you DONT already have a good working knowlege of database design, then getting that knowlege under your belt is primary.
tclaremont
tclaremont
Inspiring
April 19, 2007
ColdFusion Web Application Construction Kit by Ben Forta.

This presumes that you have a good working knowlege of database design and fundamentals.
A
Amiable_Penguin15D5
Participating Frequently
April 19, 2007
This presumes that you have a good working knowlege of database design and fundamentals

I wouldn't say so. Most CF developers start off with no knowledge of application or database design. Ben's book doesn't cover much DB design IIRC, but you can find that online anyway. My #1 recommendation is Rules of Data Normalization. You can learn more on that one page than you would in a class.

If you need help with database design, you can ask here. but I also frequent another forum that deals with general web development questions like those: HveMinds

Just a quick overview of where CF fits in on a server.


  2. The operating system is your base: WIndows or Linux, CF will run on either
  3. The web server manages the actual page requests. IIS or Apache on WIndows, Apache on Linux
  4. Coldfusion is the application server. It connects to a webserver in order to process requests for coldfusion pages
  5. CF connects to most any database, so you can use SQL Server (Windows) or MySQL (Windows or Linux).


You can setup a local development environment for free. Although CF comes with a built-in webserver for local development, I recommend The ACME Guide (Apache, Coldfusion, MySQL and Eclipse).

Finally, as already mentioned, make sure your website hosting company supports Coldfusion.

Let us know if you have any other questions.
tclaremont
tclaremont
Inspiring
April 19, 2007
IIS is on the CD for XP Pro, but not for XP Home.
N
nathans77Author
Participating Frequently
April 19, 2007
Got it. So if I have a copy of XP Pro, then I can install CF on it.

How are hosting services set up? Is it just windows os + CF, or windows os+apache/IIS+CF? If I am going to setup a test computer, I want to set it up close to how hosts are setup so if I do use a hosting service, there wouldn't be much different, or does it matter?

Does any of this make sense?

Thanks for toughing with me,
Nathan
D
Dan_Bracuk
Inspiring
April 19, 2007
You might want to figure out who is going to host your church's site first. If the existing host does not support CF, and you are not willing to switch, then learning CF is more of an academic exercise than anything else.
N
Newsgroup_User
Inspiring
April 19, 2007
ha ha ha (you asked for it)

you do not really need it since cf comes with its own built-in web
server. you can happily test it out on that. there is no difference in
how cf tags and functions work on either server.
--

Azadi Saryev
Sabai-dee.com
http://www.sabai-dee.com
N
nathans77Author
Participating Frequently
April 19, 2007
I know I'll get laughs for this, but what the heck.

Do you happen to know if there is a free testing server from microsoft so I can try CF?
N
nathans77Author
Participating Frequently
April 19, 2007
"ha ha ha (you asked for it)"
Ha, nice.

Azadi - Let's say for example I have the test computer (above) but the drive has no OS. Is CF like windows server? What I'm trying to figure out is that I need to have a windows server OS on the computer first, then I can install CF. Does anyone know of a developers/trial of windows os server?

Dan - I don't want to move my church's site to CF. I'm wanting to learn CF to get that under my belt for any future projects. But yes, if I do CF on a project I will definately see if they do CF.
N
Newsgroup_User
Inspiring
April 19, 2007
> Compared to ASP, ASP.NET, and PHP, how difficult is it to learn?
> Am I able to download a development server software?

CF is by far the easiest to learn. Yes, Adobe offers a free
version of a developer server


Terms & ConditionsAccessibility statement
Using the community Terms of use Privacy Cookie preferences Do not sell or share my personal information ad choicesAdChoices