[thelist] dynamic sites

[McCaw, Douglas *]

Chris,

For Coldfusion, all that's needed is Coldfusion Studio to begin writing
Coldfusion code. If you are using NT technology (WinNT, Win2000, WinXP)
with a working web server installed (Apache is fine) then the Personal
Coldfusion Server, that is included in Studio will allow you to develop
and test applications locally. Personal Coldfusion server will provide
the link to MS Access (or another DB) that is on the local machine or
available on a network.

Only when you are ready to deploy, will you need the actual Coldfusion
server.
If you are renting server space from another company they may be able to
upgrade your service to use a Coldfusion Server.

Coldfusion is a tag based language, so it will be very familiar to a
HTML'er.
I would be less concerned about which technology that you choose leading to
a cul-de-sac. Technologies change very rapidly, and a well designed and
documented system can evolve with technology changes.

Even if Coldfusion does not work out, Studio (the big brother/Sister of
Homesite) is a dandy Web Editor, but it will cost you about $500 dollars
American, beyond the 30 evaluation copy from Macromedia (I hope they still
do this).

Good luck,
Douglas McCaw

Web Applications Consultant
mccawd at cber.fda.gov



<-- Chris Price wrote -->
My experience has been in building html in fragments around a Java driven
engine (if that makes sense) using a text editor.

I have heard some good reports about Coldfusion and I'm trying to figure out
what we'd need, in terms of software,  using an Apache server.

I figure we'd just need just Coldfusion Studio to create a dynamic site +
something to build a shopping cart.

The way I see it you need a server, a database, software to access the data
and html to make sense of it.