Forum Moderators: phranque
I've been doing Internet Marketing/SEO for several years now and have worked with everything besides ColdFusion. My questions are:
1. What exactly is ColdFusion and is it comparable to DW, FP and any other site builder?
2. Does ColdFusion have any setbacks as far as Search Engine Optimization? From what I see now, it looks as if every page shares the same META tags and same coding. Can this be changed? (let's hope so!) and how?
3. Can I open ColdFusion pages in Dreamweaver and make changes to them without messing up the page or altering any ColdFusion stuff?
4. What is the best way to make changes individually to each page that has been made using CF? (for SEO purposes)
Basically I am totally confused and ANY information on ColdFusion and it working with SEO would be extremely helpful. I look at the .cfm files and am so lost on what is what. There are HTML files and matching CFM files and I'm not sure which one to open in order to edit. Also, DW crashes every time I open a CF file. Is this because its not for it!?
I know these all might be dumb questions and I'm sorry to bother you all with this but its all new to me. Thank you all so much in advanced and thank you for allowing me to be a part of this community.
-Jessica
I am not an expert in ColdFusion, but I have worked with it enough (on two large projects over the summer), so here is what I know...
1. What exactly is ColdFusion and is it comparable to DW, FP and any other site builder?
CF has come a long way. Back in the day if you sent large amount of traffic via the search engines, the server would crash. Macromedia acquired CF and rewrote it and the current version is very good. I tested it hard and could not get the server to crash, even sending 5,000 pings to the server at once. If you have Studio MX, CF is easily integrated.
2. Does ColdFusion have any setbacks as far as Search Engine Optimization?
None that I could see. If you can't edit the head section, then you are probably using an old version. Update to the latest.
3. Can I open ColdFusion pages in Dreamweaver and make changes to them without messing up the page or altering any ColdFusion stuff?
Yes you can.
4. What is the best way to make changes individually to each page that has been made using CF? (for SEO purposes)
Treat it as you would a normal static page.
If you are having system crashes, my advice is to make sure you have Studio MX and the latest version of CF. I never experienced a crash while I worked on the projects.
Cheers,
CaboWabo
I agree with cabowabo comments above. Basically, ColdFusion is a scripting language, just like ASP or PHP. You use DW or FP (or any other HTML editor) to edit the pages.
A .cfm page is an HTML page that contains CF tags. So if you open the page, you should see CF tags mixed in with the HTML tags. DW normally colourcodes the text to make it easier to distinguish. If DW is crashing when you try to open a .cfm file, then try reinstalling DW, or download the latest updates from Macromedia.
The scripting language you use won't affect SEO (unless you're using sessions, or rewriting URLS, etc). ColdFusion executes on the server, before the user/SE sees it, and outputs pure HTML to the user.
I've always found CF to be much faster and easier to code than ASP or PHP, and it's been my language of choice for several years.
There are plenty of good places out there to learn more about CF - try the Macromedia online docs at [livedocs.macromedia.com...] (CF-MX) for a good online reference, [macromedia.com...] for the official CF forums, or Google for others. There's a lively CF community out there, and we look forwards to welcoming you to it!
Good luck!
XO
Jessica
1. Can each page have different HTML tags (say image tags, Head tags, etc.). I don't see HTML tags on most pages. And how?
2. Say on the website live there are 50 pages, when I go into the site through FTP or DW MX they are not the ones I need like the "about us" is not there. There are a bunch of cfm files and in those are fusebbox frameworks? And the code starts with cfwebstore comments which means they bought some programming stuff and and I'm wondering if i can move this down and place my HEAD tags here and/or do these comments have a negative affect on SE spiders?So I don't see how I can edit each page to be SE friendly if I can't even find the content or pages I need.
I'm still so lost. I'm sorry if these are dumb questions. Any comments, past posts or help on this would be much appreciated. I am working on this client’s site and we are hoping to meet a deadline and I'm totally stuck on this. I have the information I'd like to place on the site and I know the changes I'd like to make but I can't find the web pages and I can't find where I should be placing this info. (Sigh) Thank you for any help and thank you for hearing my lost self try to explain what I'm so lost about.
Can I do this? The site is findamasseur.com
Fusebox is a programming application framework that is designed to reuse code and make development simple. I never used it (worked out my own system before this came along - gosh, that makes me feel old!) but the site fusebox.org.
To build a Fusebox application, a developer breaks his or her application down into actions (fuseactions) and then puts pages and scripts (fuses) together in a directory (circuit). The HTTP request will call specific actions like
index.cfm?fuseaction=mycircuit.myfuseaction, and the associated fuses are executed by the circuit controller. The sequence of files executed along with some accompanying utilities and a API are enabled via the core files.
What this means is that you have a main .cfm page, which via the URL pulls in distinct modules to create a whole page. It can be a bit tricky until you get the hang of it. What is happening is that when you look at the main .cfm page, you don't see any HTML, because the different sections of the page (ie, top nav, left menu, main content, bottom nav) are all in distinct pages (circuits). So, you have to figure out which circuits are used in each page. If you just stick code in there you'll probably break it.
Also, the URL comments aren't the friendliest for SEs. I have a custom tag I can give you if you like, what it does is changes the? into / (so mypage.cfm?var1=1&var2=2 turns into mypage.cfm/var1/1/var2/2). And get rid of the frameset.
Again, good luck!
Nice post, you covered the areas I neglected. Have a Waborita on me!
Cheers,
CaboWabo
Is it possible to make clean URLs with ColdFusion?
If you are concerned with the long URL string that can occur, if you read the documentation on the latest version, the long strings are automatically converted. I've never had an issue with a CF site being non-indexeable by the engines.
Cheers,
CaboWabo
