Creating a root folder for the application

After signing up with a web hosting company or setting up the server software yourself, create a root folder for your web application on the computer running the web server.

Make sure the folder is published by the web server--in other words, the web server can serve any file in this folder or in any of its subfolders in response to an HTTP request from a web browser. For example, on a computer running ColdFusion MX 7, any file in the \CFusionMX7\wwwroot folder or any of its subfolders can be served to a web browser.

The following are the default root folders of selected web servers:

To test the web server, place a test HTML page in the default root folder and attempt to open it by entering the page’s URL in a browser. The URL comprises the domain name, such as www.mysite.com, and the filename of the HTML page, as follows:

www.mysite.com/testpage.htm

If the web server is running on your local computer, you can use localhost instead of a domain name. Using the previous example, enter the following localhost URL depending on your web server:

If the page doesn’t open as expected, check for the following errors:

• The web server is not started. Consult the web server’s documentation for starting instructions.
• The file does not have an .htm or .html extension.
• You entered the page’s file path (for example, c:\CFusionMX7\wwwroot\testpage.htm), not its URL (for example, http://localhost:8500/testpage.htm), in the browser’s Address text box.
• The URL contains a typing mistake. Check for errors and make sure the filename is not followed by a slash, such as http://localhost:8080/testpage.htm/.

After creating a root folder for your application, define a Dreamweaver site to manage your files. See Defining a Dreamweaver site.