Install And Configure ColdFusion MX 6.1 on Windows

Installing ColdFusion MX 6.1

I'm installing on my Windows XP laptop (P4 3.06GHz, 1 GB RAM), and most of the screen shots you see from this point will reflect this. Those using Windows 2000 should be able to follow with little or no difficulty.

This is also a good time to point out that the Developer Edition can be installed on Microsoft Windows 98, ME, NT 4 SP6A, 2000 SP3, XP, or 2003. The 98 and ME installations are only for development purpose, however, and will not support a production-level service.

Double click the installation file (coldfusion-61-win.exe) to start the process. You should see the following window.

This shows that the installer is preparing the files for installation and extracting everything to a temp folder. Just sit back and give the installer a few seconds to do its thing.

When you see this window, select your language and click OK. It's more than likely that only one choice will be available -- the language you downloaded -- but double-check just to make sure.

After you click OK, you'll see this window:

This is just an introduction that tells you what you're about to do. Here, it tells you this wizard is designed to install CF MX 6.1 on your computer, or generate an EAR or WAR file for a J2EE server installation. If you don't know what an EAR or WAR is, don't worry about it -- we won't go down that road in this article.

Click Next, and you'll be presented with the License Agreement for the server. Feel free to read through it and make an informed decision before you select the "I accept" radio button and click Next. Of course, if you don't accept it, you can't install the server, and you won't need to finish the rest of this article…

After you click the acceptance radio button, you'll be presented with a screen at which you can do something! OK, it's not much, but it is one of two critical points during this installation.

The next screen is the Install Type window.

At this window, you'll want to select the "Install new version of ColdFusion MX" and check off the "Developer Edition (Single-IP Only)" option. If you want to, you can select the 30-day trial (Enterprise Edition), but you'd only do this is if you planned to buy the server in the next 30 days, or you needed to have multiple IPs hit the server during the next 30 days.

After 30 days, the Trial Edition becomes a Developer Edition, which means the server is limited to a single IP access, but this doesn't hinder any of the features. Basically, you'll have a copy of Enterprise Edition that can be accessed by the local computer (127.0.0.1 / localhost) and one outside IP address. This is nice if you decide to set this server up on a dedicated computer and do you coding on another computer, then upload to the server for debugging and testing.

Click the Next button to see this screen, which presents three different installation choices.

The installer is a bit vague here, so hopefully my explanations will be a little more enlightening.

• Server Configuration – This is the option you'll check for the purposes of this tutorial, and probably for most of your future installations. This option creates ColdFusion as a standalone server that hooks into your Web server (IIS, Apache etc). This is the way most of the earlier versions of ColdFusion were installed, and is probably the option you'll be most comfortable with.
• J2EE Configuration (ColdFusion MX with JRun 4) – You'd choose this option if you wanted to install ColdFusion as a J2EE application and run it on the Macromedia JRun Application Server. If you are familiar with Applications Servers (Websphere, JRun, Sun One, Tomcat etc.) then you might like this option -- especially if you plan to integrate or tie in a lot of Java programming.
• J2EE Configuration (EAR/WAR file) – This is the option you'd select if you wanted to install ColdFusion as a J2EE Application on another Application Server. This will create an EAR or a WAR file that you can then deploy onto your J2EE server and run ColdFusion from.

The two J2EE options will not be covered here, as they can be extremely complicated for those with no or little J2EE Application Server experience.

For our purposes, we'll select Server configuration and click the Next button.

The next screen you'll see asks where you want to install the ColdFusion server.

I recommend you just leave this at the default unless you have specific reason to install it somewhere else.

If you accidentally type something here, or decide against putting the files into another directory, you can just click the "Restore Default Directory" button to have it default back to the C:\CFusionMX folder.

After you've told the installer where to install ColdFusion, you'll need to tell it where to install the CF Administrator. I recommend you leave this at the default setting unless you changed something during your Apache installation.

Go ahead and click the Next button. You should see a screen which looks like this:

This screen allows you to select the Web Server that you want ColdFusion to configure for use with ColdFusion MX and your CFML pages.

You'll notice that there are no Web Servers/Sites listed here, but don't worry -- this is OK. We have to tell ColdFusion we want to use the Apache Web server. To do this, click the Add button.

At this point, you could select the "Built-in Web server (Development use only)" option, since we're building a development environment. I tend to shy away from this option, though, because I'm a firm believer in having your development environment mimic your production environment as closely as possible. For example, if you use the built-in Web server, but your host has Apache, and you have problems with your code at your host, but not locally, you could spend hours or days spinning your wheels.

Once you click that button, you'll get a new window into which you'll input some data. The window should look like this once you fill it out:

Make sure you select Apache as your Web Server and, if you left the defaults for your Apache installation, you can use "C:\Program Files\Apache Group\Apache2\conf" for the Configuration Directory and "C:\Program Files\Apache Group\Apache2\bin\Apache.exe" as the Directory and file name of server binary.

When you're done, click the OK button. You screen should now look like this:

Once you've made your selection, click the Next button to continue the process. You'll be presented with a screen that asks for the ColdFusion MX Administrator Location. This gives you the opportunity to identify where you want to put the CFIDE folder and all its contents (which includes the CF Admin code). Again, I recommend leaving this at the default directory unless you have a specific site set up for the administrator, or have a good idea of what you're doing.

When you're done, click the Next button once again. You'll be presented with a screen that allows you to type in your Administrator Password -- the password you'll use for the ColdFusion Administrator Login.

I recommend you start a good practice here, and choose a strong password. Try to think of something that has letters in upper and lower case, and try to toss in some numbers and maybe even a special character or two. The more cryptic you can be, the better. Even though this is just a development environment, it's never too late to get into the habit of using good security practices.

Once you've entered your password into the text fields, click the Next button. You should be presented with the Installation Confirmation screen.

This will outline the choices you made, and some of the data you entered. Feel free to review this screen and, when you're ready, click the Install button.

Once you've clicked the Install button, you'll be launched into the install process. Depending on the speed of your machine, this could take a few minutes up to a few moments. You'll be kept in the loop during the installation by messages that appear below the CF logo. In this image, the installer tells us it's installing the Core ColdFusion Files.

A word to the wise: if you start the ColdFusion installation process, don't stop it. Sure, there's a cancel button in the lower left corner, but I've had reports from many people that canceling at this point will corrupt the installation and prevent further installations from occurring. Just let the installer do its thing and, if you have to, you can always uninstall and reinstall after this process is complete.

When the installer is finished, you'll see the following:

Go ahead and click the "Done" button, and you'll see a browser window that will open the ColdFusion Administrator Login page.

If, when your browser opens, you see a blank page or an HTTP 500 Internal Server Error, don't worry. We just have to do a bit of configuration within Apache to get things running perfectly. Keep this window open and continue to the next part of this article for more details.