taff — Fri, 07 Dec 2001 23:03:03 +0000

ColdFusion? That's so... last week!

I actually got the mail forms working and haven't taken another look at CF since. Thanks for the tip on hosting though.

Now I'm trying to see how much trouble I can get into with PHP/mySQL! mwuhahaha!

taff
- a little knowledge is a dangerous thing!

openmind — Fri, 07 Dec 2001 22:06:24 +0000

Coupla things,

Thera IS ONE free host that I have found & used. It is CFM-resources. They are OK for "cutting your teeth" on ColdFusion but don't expect too much support for the free sites and the server is a bit unreliable. Saying that it is free and will give a good oppurtunity to try out your CF site.

My site is entirely written using CF and is hosted by ExpertHost.com. Reliable, good support and cheap at $15/month.

The best way I learnt ColdFusion is to do as Wil suggested and download ColdFusion 5. Its a whopping 80MB but worth the wait. The beauty is after the 30-day trial it becomes a local server only mening you can't use your machine as a public web server. Not many people do this anyway and it makes a great development server.

Last thing, sending mail in ColdFusion is a piece of cake. See below:

<cfmail to = "recipent@whatever.com"
   from = "you@whatever.com"
   subject = "Your Subject"
   server = "smtp.yourserver.com"
   port = "25">

Your msg body here

</cfmail>

You can add cc, bcc have it looping over queries for a mailing list, anything you like to the above and its is all very simple...

I'm no expert in CF but if you have any questions I'll try to help!

Wil — Mon, 03 Dec 2001 10:30:56 +0000

... but if you really want to dive straight in and opt for a hosting provider, try reading through the information found here first:

http://www.hostindex.com/showcases/coldfusion/showcase.asp

Wil — Mon, 03 Dec 2001 10:29:30 +0000

Hmm. Surely that's the fault of the 'idiot' webmaster for not running any error checking on the information sent.
I wouldn't blame CF for that.

Anyway, what I would do is to download a copy of the ColdFusion server...

http://www.macromedia.com/software/coldfusion/

And set this up on your local machine. If it's just testing, playing or developmnet you're interested in, there's no need to shell out for a full blown hosting provider. Just install a copy on any of your local machine and go from there.

mairving — Sun, 02 Dec 2001 23:33:38 +0000

Most of my bad experience was working for a company that used CF for it's E-commerce site. The problem was not neccessarily CF but the idiot webmaster that we had. I ran the customer service end of the website.

Here is a typical conversation with the webmaster;
Me: "Webmaster, I just received an order without a name, address and phone number on it."
Webmaster: "So, what is your problem?"
Me: "I just received an order without a name, address and phone number on it. Kind of hard to ship it don't you think."
Webmaster: "I don't really have time right now to look at".
Me (after hanging up): "Wanna bet?"
Me (calling webmaster's boss) : "I have a problem with an order..."

Plus this idiot was pulling down about 120K a year. I guess that I saw so many CF errors, I really didn't want to see CF again.

I have also heard that CF is not very scalable.

taff — Sun, 02 Dec 2001 22:03:44 +0000

Quote: Originally posted by mairving
Yeah, not a lot of hosts, free or not, support ColdFusion, just because it is so expensive to setup on the server. Not a huge fan of CF myself, had one too many bad experiences.

My host included - at my package level anyway. I could upgrade but it would be hardly worth it for just a little experimentation. What sort of "bad experiences" have you had?

mairving — Sun, 02 Dec 2001 19:58:40 +0000

Yeah, not a lot of hosts, free or not, support ColdFusion, just because it is so expensive to setup on the server. Not a huge fan of CF myself, had one too many bad experiences.

Re: talking to myself

Wil — Sun, 02 Dec 2001 19:33:41 +0000

Quote: Originally posted by taff

Does anyone know of a free host offhand that supports CF?

You are joking, right?!

talking to myself

taff — Sun, 02 Dec 2001 17:30:54 +0000

I went ahead and downloaded the CF Studio demo. Wow! As a HomeSite user, I'm very much at home with this app - the interface is identical.

I've already managed the mailto forms and am eager to play more

Does anyone know of a free host offhand that supports CF?