Installing a ColdFusion application server

To run ColdFusion pages, you need the ColdFusion application server. This server is available for Windows, Linux, Solaris, and HP-UX systems.

Windows users can download and install a fully functional, developer edition of ColdFusion MX 7 from the Macromedia website at www.macromedia.com/go/coldfusion/. A copy of ColdFusion MX 7 Developer Edition is also available on the Dreamweaver CD (Windows version only).

NOTE

The Developer Edition is for non-commercial use for developing and testing web applications. It is not licensed for deployment. It supports requests from the local host and two remote IP addresses. You can use it to develop and test your web applications as long as you want; the software does not expire. For more information, see "ColdFusion MX 7 product editions" in Using ColdFusion (Help > Using ColdFusion).

During installation, you can configure ColdFusion to use the web server built into ColdFusion or another web server installed on your system. Generally, it’s best to match your development environment to your production environment as closely as possible. Therefore, if you have an existing web server such as Microsoft IIS on your development computer, you may want to select it instead of the built-in ColdFusion web server.

Macintosh users can use a web hosting service with a ColdFusion plan or install ColdFusion on a remote Windows, Linux, Solaris, or HP-UX computer running a web server. You can also install ColdFusion on a Mac OS X computer running a J2EE server such as JRun or Tomcat. For more information, see the Macromedia website at www.macromedia.com/go/cfmx7_mac.

After installing the application server, create a root folder for your web application. See Creating a root folder for the application.