- To create a web page with ColdFusion, you must first have a web server that is set up to host ColdFusion. Without this step, the ColdFusion commands will be completed ignored. You must have a web server setup to handle requests from the network, but the Cold Fusion engine software must also be installed on the server. The ColdFusion engine must also be enabled in the server software; both Apache and Microsoft's Internet Information Server (IIS) have a check box that needs to be checked to enable the ColdFusion engine.
- To use ColdFusion on individual web pages, the ColdFusion commands need to be embedded in the web page source code. All ColdFusion commands are typed inside the same angle brackets where you will type all standard HTML tags. ColdFusion tags that have syntax errors will generate errors from the ColdFusion server, unlike errors in standard HTML tags. However, if a ColdFusion tag is misspelled or otherwise not understood by the ColdFusion server, it will be passed on to the web server, where it will also be ignored and no error will be generated.
- Most often when ColdFusion is set up on a web server, it is to allow access to various databases from the web pages. They can actually be just about any type of database (Access, MySql, SQL, Oracle and so forth). However, to connect the ColdFusion engine to the database, a data source must be created inside ColdFusion. The ColdFusion data source will tell ColdFusion the location, layout, and format of the database so the ColdFusion engine will know how to read the database. Once this data source is set up, any web page that is processed by the ColdFusion engine will be able to access the data in the database.
- When a computer requests a web page from the site that is set up correctly with ColdFusion, the web server will notice that the web page is a Cold Fusion page, usually because of the file extension on the web page, .cfm. The web server will then send the source of the web page to the ColdFusion engine. The ColdFusion engine will process the web page and execute all the ColdFusion commands on the web page, including any database references and accesses. When the ColdFusion engine is done with all the ColdFusion commands, it will return the page back to the web server as plain text, replacing only the ColdFusion commands with other information. The web server will then send the web page to the requesting computer where all the HTML tags will be processed.
