Creating a Site for Dynamic Pages

   

When you're creating a new site in Dreamweaver (Site, Manage Sites, New), there's just one step that's specific to creating a site that includes ColdFusion pages: In the Testing Server category of the Site Definition dialog, choose ColdFusion as the server model, as shown in Figure 13.1.

Figure 13.1. When creating a new site that will contain ColdFusion pages, choose ColdFusion in the "Server model" drop-down menu in the Testing Server category of the Site Definition dialog.

NOTE

Before doing any of the things discussed in the rest of this chapter, you have to do two things:

• Create or obtain a database. Databases are created with database management systems such as Microsoft Access, Microsoft SQL Server, or MySQL. The CD accompanying this book includes a Microsoft Access database, greendept.mdb , which was used to create the examples in this chapter.
  
  
• Put the database somewhere where ColdFusion can find itusually on the ColdFusion server itself. ColdFusion runs only under Windows. For development purposes, if you're on a Windows machine, it's convenient to install the ColdFusion server and the database on your local machine. If you're running Dreamweaver on a Mac, then the ColdFusion server and the database will be on a Windows machine that you access over the network. (Caution: Some early testers found this to be an unstable configuration.) Either way, a System DSN (Data Source Name ) must be created on the Windows machine, so that Windows applications can access the database. You'll probably find it easiest to use the ColdFusion Administrator to create the System DSN.