Practical Use Of ColdFusion Hosting
Coldfusion hosting is a server side scripting language which is very similar in structure to ASP and PHP. It was a product of Macromedia and is now owned by Adobe. Coldfusion server hosting not only caters to simple hosting solutions but also the features of advanced tools of ecommerce hosting which are required for e-commerce web sites. Generally, coldfusion website hosting is utilized in small and large businesses. It is also used for those personal website owners who require some advance applications on their web sites. This scripting language lets users create advanced level applications in a very short development time and with database integration. Coldfusion is a server side technology therefore coldfusion web host works by using a web server to process web applications instead of simple HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language) web pages. The language itself is called coldfusion markup language (CFML) which has different tags for different kind of functions like handling text, querying databases and also interaction with various web services. The tags and attributes used in this language are similar to those of Extensible Hypertext Markup Language (XHTML) for back end functions. If you want to use coldfusion hosts you must have knowledge of html tags and coding as this language is very similar to html and it is very easy to use.
As compared to PHP, ASP or JSP, coldfusion hosts require less of a learning curve for the developer to understand as they are not very complex and easy to work with. There are many software tools that can help developers to create their own applications locally. Amongst these software development environments is one called coldfusion studio. This lets you develop applications very quickly and afterwards provides you the opportunity to move on to a coldfusion host when you are ready. You have many capabilities at your disposal, like developing applications with shopping carts for e-commerce. It also has support for interactive flash based applications.
Web hosting coldfusion is not cheap as the cost for setting up of a coldfusion server is high. In comparison to Windows or Linux based hosting, coldfusion hosting is considered a little on the higher side. Recently, with the availability of shared hosting, users now have cost effective coldfusion shared hosting. Overall, coldfusion technology is simple to use and provides an effective platform for developing some very advanced web products. The single biggest advantage of this language is that compared to other languages like PHP or JSP, it has very simple structure.
Unlike other server side languages, coldfusion hosting gives programmers the facility of tags which are designed for executing specific functions. Hence they can use these tags instead of writing blocks of codes to get their job done faster. This is the main reason for rapid development in coldfusion.
Where dedicated coldfusion 7 hosting is expensive as just the hosting services and the associated hardware will cost around a thousand pounds. However, if your requirement is for cheap coldfusion hosting without all the sophisticated features give adobe coldfusion hosting a shot. This is a free addition that Adobe offers for individuals who want to learn coldfusion. This gives you the full edition of coldfusion without any time expiration limits or reduced features. The only drawback is that it will connect to a single IP so you can use it only for your personal needs. Almost all hosting companies are now offering coldfusion hosts as an alternate to windows or Linux/Unix.
When using coldfusion, you not only get complete documentation but also access to a very lively coldfusion development community. Eventually, as you learn and grow with coldfusion you will also develop the ability to create some really high level applications. This makes coldfusion definitely worth spending money on. There are many hosting options that you can acquire according to your needs. If you want personal web site or have small virtual business then coldfusion shared hosting would be the best solution. There is the limitation of relatively less disk space, low bandwidth and low traffic requirements for shared hosting but at this stage it wont bother you.
If you must go for hosting with coldfusion there is another option that can be considered. This is coldfusion vps hosting. It is another type of shared hosting. It runs in virtualized environments, hence gives you complete control of your operating system as if you had your own dedicated server. Every account user has complete control over his account and can install software and scripts without considering the effects on other site holders on the same machine. Add to that the advantage that you are relatively isolated from hackers, virus attacks, spamming etc.
For those of you in the business of providing hosting space and services as a reseller for a large web host, you can get into coldfusion reseller hosting.
There are many other applications that can be built using coldfusion hosting. Some examples are content publishing systems, collaborative platforms, e-commerce websites amongst others.
Best coldfusion hosting gives you the best of both worlds. It lets you develop both computer software as well as dynamic database driven web sites. Coldfusion has the capability of generating web services that include SOAP and flash remoting. Another great feature in coldfusion is that it can handle asynchronous services like SMS and IMs, this is possible due to the gateway built into coldfusion.
On the very practical side, coldfusion is capable of so many things that you can do with this service. You could generate client side code for form validation and widgets. And lets not forget portable document formats and flash-paper generation from HTML. Yet another plus point in coldfusion is that you can address data base queries without consideration to platforms through JDBC and ODBC. It can interface with and get data from Active Directory Services or HTTP, LDAP, FTP, POP and Microsoft exchange platforms etc. With the ability of XML parsing, validation and querying also available, this server scripting language you can do client / server cache management. All in all coldfusion hosting is as complete a package as it comes.