Companies often find themselves forced to look to others to provide professional Web hosting services because of the costs associated with maintaining an on-site Web server. These services are known as Internet presence providers or Web hosts.

Let me say it up front: I'm frustrated by the training offered to developers. I'll set a scene; tell me if it sounds familiar.…

So you need a ColdFusion Web host. Typically, your first question would be: 'Who do I choose?' More important, I believe, is the question: 'Why am I choosing?' This statement may not seem relevant until you look at the 'whys' of choosing a ColdFusion Web host.

Thanks to those of you who sent in questions recently. I hope the answers you received from me or other members of the Allaire training team were helpful. For our readers, here are a few of the questions that were submitted.

My troubles all began when my editor heard about the Fusebox FUN conference being held on September 16 in Charlottesville, Virginia. 'You're the perfect person to report on it,' she said convincingly. 'After all, you're already going to be there doing a presentation.'

Design, build, and test version 1 of any Web application in just five days! Wow! That's what coauthor Steve Nelson theorizes can be achieved. The case study that describes the project in which he did this, and the step-by-step instructions to achieve these results, are included in one ...

Sitting in the lounge at Detroit Metro, waiting to board my flight to DC, I began to wonder what to expect at the Allaire Developer Conference. Would I really learn anything? Meet anyone interesting? Actually enjoy myself? After all, this would be my first developer conference of any k...

From: screwtape@fourthcircle.hell To: wormwood@e-hell.com April 4, 1997 My dearest W, let me join so many others in congratulating you on your promotion to our new Internet division. I don't pretend to understand such things - I leave such newfangled enterprises to you young...

Drag-and-drop Web development - it's not a new concept, really. It dates back a few years to the first releases of NetObject's Fusion and Microsoft's FrontPage. It enables developers and designers (and administrative assistants, janitors, and just about anyone else) to drag and drop th...

It's always good when books can supplement or even replace application guides that come with a product. Ben Forta's latest book, Allaire Spectra E-Business Construction Kit, provides an in-depth view into Allaire's newest product, Spectra.

There Goes the E-Neighborhood Browse the Web, or nearly every business or financial publication, and you'll see that e-commerce is no longer just a great idea. It's everywhere. Sales over the Web are in the trillions of dollars. Books (amazon.com), cars (iMotors.com), groceries (HomeG...

In the beginning there was a Web site. Over time, the humble site matured into an e-commerce application. Hundreds of hits per day turned into thousands, then tens of thousands...until the server crashed and all the e-customers and all the e-money went elsewhere.

Late in July ColdFusion developers who simply couldn't wait for the November Allaire Developer conference had the opportunity to gather with compatriots and spend time learning CF tricks and techniques from some of the most popular CF speakers.

With personalization and customization becoming a mainstay of Web sites, the burden of adding and managing this functionality falls on Web developers. In addition, many organizations want to put the responsibility of content management and updates into the hands of nontechnical staff. ...

I'm a great believer in modularity of code. Modularity - breaking code into distinct pieces with a well-defined responsibility - is crucial if large-scale development projects are to be on time, on budget, scalable, maintainable and robust.

Name your price seems to be the catch-phrase in e-commerce these days. The success of sites like eBay and Priceline testify to that.

The title of this article refers to an ancient Zen Buddhist saying, meant – like other non-sense proverbs in this tradition – to startle the student into a new way of looking at things.

eWebEditPro from Ektron is a browser-based WYSIWYG editor that lets your Web site users create HTML content even if they don't know HTML. In this review we discuss why you'd need eWebEditPro, and point out some of its features and limitations.

Ah yes, the almighty database. O highly exalted piece of technology, we worship you and the server rack upon which you are mounted.

This month I've taken the liberty of assembling a small collection of unrelated ideas that I think you might enjoy as ColdFusion appetizers.

Some questions seem to be so obvious that you wonder why they're even asked. Take this one, for example: 'Would you prefer to have a noncertified mechanic work on your car (one who supposedly does excellent work) or a certified mechanic perform the same task?'

First, a confession: I'm a Microsoft SQL Server plebe. Oh, sure, I've written plenty of SQL commands for Access, Foxpro and even an occasional Oracle database, but the needs of more than one client called out for me to tackle SQL Server.

It seems everyone I meet lately wants to set up an online store. 'It would be great if I could sell my handmade Barbie doll dresses or sell ties, direct, on the Web!' The e-store is hot and the fire is spreading.

In his new book, The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference (Little, Brown), Malcolm Gladwell makes the case for critical stages in the development of an endeavor.

For ColdFusion developers, this really is the best of times. Demand for developers is exploding, taking salaries and consulting rates along with it.

Building rich Web-based software is fun, exciting...and can take too much time. Most clients have the same core software needs: secure, browser-based infrastructure, integration with existing systems and scalability to meet future needs. A Web application platform capable of all this w...

Shortly after beginning to work with the Fusebox development methodology (see end of article for a brief list of Fusebox resources), I found that I wanted a standardized way of documenting code. What I needed was something easy to learn and adopt, something that could provide importan...

I had been working on the architecture of a large, complex e-commerce site when I ran into a situation. 'It's always a situation,' I muttered. What would I do when users requested a service offered on the site, but they needed to register for it first? I could just write code that st...

Session management is an essential tool for any Web application; however, one crazy coder on a shared server can kill the tool, your session variables - and maybe a sale to a customer. The problem isn't uncommon. Session, application and server-scope variables are stored in server RAM.

Extending ColdFusion to incorporate Microsoft's Distributed Component Object Model (DCOM) is a powerful way to expand the capabilities of the application server on the Microsoft platform. We'll view DCOM through ColdFusion and cover some of the features and pitfalls of using these tec...

Who else is sick and tired of hearing Allaire's product evangelist, Ben Forta, touted as the CF god? Ben Forta this, Ben Forta that. All right already! So he and some other CF gurus wrote a couple books about CF and now we can't go anywhere in CF hyperspace without hearing about it.

I recently received an inquiry from a developer about my Guru-on-Call service (www.TeamAllaire.com/hal). He requested help in identifying the fuses he would need for his application.

I'm writing this prior to the turn of the new year, so I trust that somehow civilization bungled through and that you're not reading this by the light of your last candle, alert to the strange sounds outside your door that are growing ever nearer.

There's nothing more annoying (and scary) than putting your credit card information on a Web site and getting a server error...This happened to me when I tried to buy an airline ticket...I entered my information three times...and was charged for three tickets.

When I started using ColdFusion, one of the tags that piqued my curiosity most was . At the time, I had only a vague idea what LDAP was and when I started to write applications that extended beyond single pages, I realized I needed some kind of authentication. I tried the tag but wasn...