GoDaddy and Coldfusion

After a few days of installation and creative configuration I do believe the test lab is ready for just about any Coldfusion Apps or tasks I can throw at it. Below is the ordeal I went through to get there.
Update 12/2012: The Test Lab has been decommissioned.

To get coldfusion 8 installed you have to purchase the Windows hosting plan with IIS 7 running. But when I clicked to purchase the domain, that wasn’t a clear option, so I wound up with a linux and windows plan. Customer service was kind enough to offer that I transfer the cost of the linux plan to a 2nd year of windows hosting. I was insistant on getting a refund, which they finally agreed to.

Then you have to add coldfusion to your server for an additional $1.99/month but you can only buy 3 months at  a time. Once you have made your purchase you have to navigate to a wierd place in thier account manager and actually add it to the hosting plan you chose. Then your site becomes useless until they actually install the CF software.

Once coldfusion is installed, if you are like me, you will begin testing your favorite toys like using cfdiv bind to perform some ajax functions. You will quickly learn that you do not have permissions to access the D:coldfusion/yourserver/CFIDE/scripts/ directory which actually powers the ajax apps. A quick note to Customer service will let you know within 24 hours to use google to solve your problem. Here is where you meet all the other disgruntled ex-goDaddy users. You will read about wonderful fixes like using cfajaximport to point to your CFIDE directory but never be able to get it to work.

Finally the only alternative is to get a copy of the CFIDE/scripts directory and upload it to your site. You would think this would be an easy task, and adobe would have it out there to download and unzip. NOPE! you have to download and install the free developer version of Coldfusion in order to get it. After  about an hour of installing CF8 on your local PC you can grab the CFIDE/scripts directory and upload it to your site, for an hour. You even think about using the cfimport tag to point to the mySitename/CFIDE/scripts directory.  You test your little app and it still fails. By accident you rename your CFIDE directory to myCFIDE, reset the cfajaximport tag to this new name, and voila it works.

To enhance this you put the cfajaximport tag into an application.cfm file on the root of your site so it works from now on. Amazingly it still works. That is as far as I have gotten, but from my few tests I can see CF working on GoDaddy.

Recap:

1. Buy domain & windows hosting (hopefully without the linux hosting too)
2. Buy the coldfusion add-on
3. ADD coldfusion to your hosting plan. Wait 24 hours
4. Build a typical helloWorld.cfm to make sure CF is working.
5. Expand the helloWorld.cfm to test if ajax features work.
6. If ajax features don’t work, add a copy of the CFIDE/scripts to your site.
7. Rename CFIDE to something like myCFIDE
8. Create application.cfm and point the cfajaximport tag to your new myCFIDE/scripts directory.
9. test test test.

Someone may figure out a way to actually use the original CFIDE directory but until then this is my solution.