Need Help Migrating CFM application to server

Can someone offer me assistance migrating my Coldfusion application onto a remote (non-web) server? I have the application migrated and the database is there, but it appears to me that the browser is not attempting to run any of the Coldfusion commands in the .cfm files.

Thanks!

-Swizylstik

Maybe I'm not understanding what you're doing, but a browser by itself is not capable of running Coldfusion commands.

CF requires a web server to handle HTTP requests. When CF is installed, it either is configured to use a built-in, development-only server, or is configured to work with a web server such as IIS or Apache. But there has to be a web server to handle the HTTP requests and hand .cfm pages over to CF for processing.

Thank you very much for this reply. Now I'm a little stuck here on what to do.

This application is basically just input forms that write to a database and then report that data out. I inherited this project from another programmer and the client insisted I not change the language. It wasn't until the project was finished that I understood this would not be running on a web server at all.

Can you give me any guidance on what I can do with this without having to reprogram the entire thing? I can send you links to view if you PM me privately.

Thank you!

Tracy

Thank you for your reply. Can you tell me if there is a way to configure a server to run this without having to reprogram the entire application? The application basically consists of forms used to gather data and write to a database and them some pages that report that data back out.

Thanks!

-Tracy

Sure, just set up an IIS or Apache web server on the machine and configure it to use the CF server to process .cfm pages.

If you are opening a URL in your browser to run a page, what does that URL look like? Are you sure the server doesn't already have a web server installed on it?

Is there a way to set this server up as a web server, but then only run the files locally? The issue I have is that this information is sensitive so it cannot be accessible to anybody via the web. The only way to access has to be internally onsite only.

I'm not onsite at the location. I access the server remotely via Citrix. Your help is greatly appreciated!

-Tracy

There are a few options but it will require you to know what you're doing (or be able to ask someone who knows what they are doing to do it for you):

• Add firewall rules that allow only certain IP address or blocks of IP addresses to connect to the server.
• Add OS-level permissions to the files/folders which require the user to log in using a valid user name and password before being allowed to access the pages.
• Add an application layer login form to restrict access to the pages (just like Gmail or Facebook).

I don't know how the server is set up currently. I'm not accustomed to using this kind of server. I usually develop web applications that are run on a remote web server. So I'm used to FTP, I'm used to phpMyAdmin to work with databases. This server was set up by the engineers at the hospital I'm working for.

Can you tell me if I ask them to set up the server in the way you've described will that mean that the server will be accessible through the web? The data on the server cannot be vulnerable to a web infiltration (if that makes sense).

Thanks so much for your help so far.

Whether the server would be available on the public internet depends entirely on your network infrastructure. If the machine is on an internal network that is not routable from the internet, then only machines on the internal network would be able to reach it. But again, that all depends on how the network and the routers are configured.

CF works the same as PHP (or ASP.NET, or Grails, or whatever): they are application servers that run in conjunction with a web server. So it's a "remote web server" in the same way that a PHP server that isn't on your local machine would be a remote web server. You can move files to the CF server via FTP, you can administer databases using database tools like MySQL's Workbench, etc. So if you think the CF setup is fundamentally different from a PHP setup, it really isn't.