ColdFusion Administrator
The ColdFusion Administrator (also referred to as CF Admin), is the central interface for configuring your ColdFusion server. You can configure settings for mail, database connections, debugging options and much more.
Accessing the ColdFusion Administrator
You need to have ColdFusion installed first. If you haven't installed ColdFusion yet see the ColdFusion Installation Guide.
Once you have installed ColdFusion, you can access the ColdFusion Administrator via the following URL: http://{website url}/cfide/administrator (where {website url} is the name of your website's URL). This is the default URL - this directory and it's contents is automatically created when you install ColdFusion.
For example, if you're using localhost, the CF Admin URL will either be http://localhost:8500/cfide/administrator (if you're using the ColdFusion standalone web server), or http://localhost/cfide/administrator (if you're using your own web server, such as IIS or Apache). This is because ColdFusion's standalone web server uses port 8500 whereas, a typical web server setup will use port 80 (and you don't need to specify the port number if you use port 80).
What can you do via the ColdFusion Administrator?
When you access the ColdFusion Administrator, you will see the following options on the left menu. Clicking on each option will display the page for configuring that option.
Server Settings
| Caching | Configures the way ColdFusion caches files and queries. Caching refers to regularly-used resources being stored in memory. This speeds up access to those resources. |
| Client Variables | Configures the way client variables are stored. The options are:
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| Memory Variables | Configures how memory variables are handled. You can enable/disable J2EE session variables, Application variables and Session variables. You can also set a default and maximum timeout for session and application variables. Note that if you enable session variables, you still need to enable session management in your ColdFusion application by including the following code in the Application.cfm file: <cfapplication sessionmanagement="yes"> |
| Mappings | Configures aliases to physical directories on your server. This can make it easier when coding. For example, you could create a mapping called mapCT and map it to a physical directory called c:\inetpub\wwwroot\common\customtags\customtag.cfm. Now, whenever you need to reference a template inside that directory, you no longer need to include the full relative path. Therefore, instead of having to type something like <cfmodule template="../../common/customtags"> you can type <cfmodule template="/mapCT/customtag.cfm">. |
| Mail Server | Configures connection and logging settings for when you use the cfmail tag. You can specify the mail server and port number, connection timeout (how long ColdFusion should wait for a reponse from the mail server before timing out) and the spool interval (how frequently ColdFusion spools the spool folder). You can also specify whether ColdFusion should log errors and what type of errors it should log. For more information on sending email with ColdFusion see the Coldfusion Mail article. |
| Charting | Specifies how ColdFusion should cache charts and handle cfchart requests. |
| Java and JVM | Specifies how ColdFusion should interact with the Java Virtual Machine (JVM) that ColdFusion runs on top of. |
| Archives and Deployment | This section of the ColdFusion Administrator allows you to easily migrate your ColdFusion application to different environments. For more information on this, see the ColdFusion Archive and Deploy tutorial. |
Data & Services
| Data Sources | This is where you configure database connections for when you perform queries with the cfquery tag. You create a datasource and map it to a database. You can supply extra information if required such as username/passwords etc. |
| Verity Collections | Enables you to configure new Verity collections (for your website's search functionality). You can create, index, repair, optimize, purge, and delete Verity collections. |
| Verity K2 Server | Enables you to configure ColdFusion's connection to a Verity K2 Server. You specify the server host name or IP address and port number of the K2 server. |
| Web Services | Enables you to map names to your web services. You can also supply username/password details for each web service. |
Debugging & Logging
| Debugging Settings | This section of the ColdFusion Administrator allows you to enable debugging and other monitoring. This can be useful in a development environment because, when you view your website, ColdFusion can output variables, template execution times, detailed error information etc. |
| Debugging IP Addresses | Allows you to limit the output of debugging information to a particular IP address. Therefore, if you want to see debugging information but you don't want other users to see it, you can specify your IP address but nobody elses. |
| Logging Settings | Configures where log files should be stored, what the maximum size should be, as well as what should be logged. |
| Log Files | Allows you to search/view, download, archive, or delete ColdFusion log files. This feature is not enabled for ColdFusion MX Professional. |
| Scheduled Tasks | This section of the ColdFusion Administrator allows you to configure scheduled tasks. For more information on ColdFusion scheduled tasks, see the ColdFusion Scheduled Tasks tutorial. |
| System Probes | Allows you to configure a "System Probe" which regularly checks to see if there's a problem with your ColdFusion Server. You can nominate for a notification email to be sent to the administrator in the event there is a problem. |
| Code Analyzer | This was implemented to assist developers in upgrading to ColdFusion MX from earlier versions of ColdFusion. The ColdFusion Code Analyzer checks to see if there are any compatibility issues with your code and outputs a report of recommendations. |
Extensions
| Java Applets | Enables you to register applets for use with the cfapplet tag. You can provide all the information about the applet here so that when you call the applet, you don't need to include as much code. |
| CFX Tags | Enables you to register CFX tags (custom tags written in Java or C++ instead of CFML). |
| Custom Tag Paths | Enables you to specify a directory for your custom tags so that ColdFusion can use this information whenever you call a custom tag in your code. If you specify the directory here, when you call the custom tag in your code, you only need to specify the custom tag name (you don't need to specify the location). |
| CORBA Connectors | Allows you to set up CORBA connectors for use with VisiBroker (from Borland). |
Security
| CF Admin Password | For specifying the password used to gain access to the ColdFusion Administrator. |
| RDS Password | For specifying a password for use with Remote Development Services. |
| Sandbox Security | This is called Resource Security in ColdFusion MX Professional. This section of the ColdFusion Administrator is for specifying runtime security based on directory access. |