coldfusion root and web server root

Thanks for the replies jr and michael, no specific reason just trying to get everything under control. Basically what I know now is a coldfusion mapping is used in cfincludes and cfmodule to reference a page absolutely, so if I have these relative paths depending on what page my cfinclude tag is in:
<cfinclude template"../../help/help.cfm">
<cfinclude template"../help/help.cfm">
<cfinclude template"help.cfm">

to make it absolute I will make a mapping called /help/ (known as logical path) which points to physical directory e.g. c:help.
Now I can do this <cfinclude template="/help/help.cfm">
the beginning / tells coldfusion to look for a mapping.

Virtual directories can confuse people but they have nothing to do with mappings and you can 99% of the time have the same mapping name as a virtual directory.

The one I am confused about now is mappings in the jrun-web.xml file! Why do I need this mapping?!! TIA

quote:

---

Originally posted by: Hydrowizard
I was looking at this line: "Be careful when setting up a root ColdFusion mapping, where the ColdFusion root and the web server root are not the same location." what are the plain english definitions of coldfusion root and web server root? TIA

---

The term "cf_root" usually refers to the directory where ColdFusion's program files are installed. On a Windows install this is usually C:\ColdFusion8.

Can you give some more context for your question if this is not what you are asking for?

This is basically talking about whether your server is multi-homed, i.e. - you are running multiple servers in IIS.

My servers that have a single website, the web server root is:

c:\inetpub\wwwroot

Thus my ColdFusion root (since I accept the defaults at install) is:

c:\inetpub\wwwroot\CFIDE

Is there a more specific reason you were asking?

- Mike

Hydrowizard wrote:
> I was looking at this line: "Be careful when setting up a root ColdFusion
> mapping, where the ColdFusion root and the web server root are not the same
> location." what are the plain english definitions of coldfusion root and web
> server root? TIA
>


Web server root is defined in your web server and it is where the web
server will start looking for files requested by HTTP requests. Often
c:/Inetpub/wwwroot or similar.

The ColdFusion root is the root defined in ColdFusion and it is where
ColdFusion will look for ColdFusion files (cfm, cfc, etc) first before
looking for them in the Web server root. It is often something like
C:\JRun4\servers\cfusion\cfusion-ear\cfusion-war.

You can drive yourself batty looking for an executing template that is
not in the web root because it is being found on the CF root first.