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:
Web server |
Default root folder |
---|---|
ColdFusion MX 7 |
\CFusionMX7\wwwroot |
IIS |
\Inetpub\wwwroot |
Apache (Windows) |
\apache\htdocs |
Apache (Macintosh) |
Users:MyUserName:Sites |
Jakarta Tomcat (Windows) |
\jakarta-tomcat-4.x.x\webapps\ROOT\ |
To test the web server, place a test HTML page in the default root folder and attempt to open it by entering the pages 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:
Web server |
Localhost URL |
---|---|
ColdFusion MX 7 |
http://localhost:8500/testpage.htm |
IIS |
http://localhost/testpage.htm |
Apache (Windows) |
http://localhost:80/testpage.htm |
Apache (Macintosh) |
http://localhost/~MyUserName/testpage.htm (where MyUserName is your Macintosh user name) |
Jakarta Tomcat (Windows) |
http://localhost:8080/testpage.htm |
NOTE |
|
By default the ColdFusion MX 7 web server runs on port 8500 and the Jakarta Tomcat web server runs on port 8080. |
If the page doesnt open as expected, check for the following errors:
After creating a root folder for your application, define a Dreamweaver site to manage your files. See Defining a Dreamweaver site.