Discussion
Understanding that the programming languages behind the creation of sites are different (and have different affects), I was wondering how future proof coldfusion is? With the development of html5 (although, admittedly, after what I have read I don't think we'll be seeing it taken up for quite a while yet) can it be integrated or, presumably, made to work alongside this at later dates?
To consumers visiting sites for purchasing products and services, would they really care what the language is so long as the design of the site is clear, precise and easy to navigate? Would it also be slow in any respect for the end user?
Not being in this field and only knowing about it through what I have read has intrigued me slightly as I have had a look at one company that offers a full integrated shopping cart for your online shop for (what I think is) a very good price. This option would be much better suited to me than trying to build a site myself with Avanquests kiddy software crap.
Opinions will be very much appreciated. Thanks in advance.
To consumers visiting sites for purchasing products and services, would they really care what the language is so long as the design of the site is clear, precise and easy to navigate? Would it also be slow in any respect for the end user?
Not being in this field and only knowing about it through what I have read has intrigued me slightly as I have had a look at one company that offers a full integrated shopping cart for your online shop for (what I think is) a very good price. This option would be much better suited to me than trying to build a site myself with Avanquests kiddy software crap.
Opinions will be very much appreciated. Thanks in advance.
TotalControl said:
Understanding that the programming languages behind the creation of sites are different (and have different affects), I was wondering how future proof coldfusion is? With the development of html5 (although, admittedly, after what I have read I don't think we'll be seeing it taken up for quite a while yet) can it be integrated or, presumably, made to work alongside this at later dates?
I thought it was pretty much dead these days anyway! It's certainly not used commonly, people the the US seem to use it more than anyone else.TotalControl said:
To consumers visiting sites for purchasing products and services, would they really care what the language is so long as the design of the site is clear, precise and easy to navigate? Would it also be slow in any respect for the end user?
The end user wouldn't care, and unless more technically savy isn't even aware of what magic is happening to deal with their clicks. There will be a speed difference between languages, but if we're talking about an e-commerce system, provided the system is written correctly it shouldn't be noticeable in any language. We're talking microseconds.At a basic level ColdFusion is a server-side language, and HTML is what displays that info to the user.
HTML won't interact with your database (for example) and unless something goes terribly wrong your end users shouldn't ever see any Cold Fusion code. Normally the only giveaway is the file extension convention in the URL.
I'm not familiar with ColdFusion or its development curve but I wouldn't worry too much about it going out of date. If your server is still running and available then ColdFusion will be able to continue to run powering your website.
A site now should be built in XHTML, theoretically future proofing it for a few years. Even when HTML 5 is the standard for new sites XHTML sites should still work just fine. If you wanted to reskin your XHTML site with HTML 5 then ColdFusion should have no problems with this at all.
Disclaimer: This is all based on the presumption that ColdFusion doesn't work in a really odd way that I'm not aware of!
HTML won't interact with your database (for example) and unless something goes terribly wrong your end users shouldn't ever see any Cold Fusion code. Normally the only giveaway is the file extension convention in the URL.
I'm not familiar with ColdFusion or its development curve but I wouldn't worry too much about it going out of date. If your server is still running and available then ColdFusion will be able to continue to run powering your website.
A site now should be built in XHTML, theoretically future proofing it for a few years. Even when HTML 5 is the standard for new sites XHTML sites should still work just fine. If you wanted to reskin your XHTML site with HTML 5 then ColdFusion should have no problems with this at all.
Disclaimer: This is all based on the presumption that ColdFusion doesn't work in a really odd way that I'm not aware of!
JohnnyPanic said:
Disclaimer: This is all based on the presumption that ColdFusion doesn't work in a really odd way that I'm not aware of!
The only issue there is that I believe that CF is similar to .NET in that it generates a large amount of the HTML that gets rendered to the user for stuff like forms and the like itself, this could potentially make it harder/nigh on impossible to move to fully HTML5 layout.The chances of you actually wanting to are realistically slim though. I suspect the bargain application you've mentioned is actually quite dated and unlikely to updated dramatically.
Does CF not require it's own server software to run? Do you have that in place or is that provided by the company who are offering the application?
Company is fullphat design. Had a chat with Martin who did give me a fairly in depth bit of information on how things are dealt with on their side. As they deal with designing of many of the things I'm after, it sort of makes a little sense for me to get this done from them (as so far, they seem to have given me the best quote). The only issue, as you have suggested, is that a separate standalone server is required for the installation. Jamie's guys have already given me the info on what is required for the site to be hosted on their side. I'm just a bit stumped on the integration side of things. I.E. Is there any difference in SEO management/ disadvantages of ranking?
I am fairly certain that I wont update the site (design wise) for a fair few years to come. Once I have the money and customer base, then bespoke systems will play their part. For now, I'm just trying to get a decent deal to include as much as I can while not going too cheap in order to sacrifice quality.
I am fairly certain that I wont update the site (design wise) for a fair few years to come. Once I have the money and customer base, then bespoke systems will play their part. For now, I'm just trying to get a decent deal to include as much as I can while not going too cheap in order to sacrifice quality.
If Register1 can provide hosting at a competitive price then that's great. Might be worth pricing a few other CF hosting plans just so that you know what to expect if you ever need to move away from them. I'm not personally a fan of ColdFusion but more for reasons that don't really affect you as a client, if your company are competent then they should be able to achieve anything you'd expect of a PHP/.NET/whatever site in CF, be it SEO a redesign to render a new type of HTML or whatever.
There's a lot to be said for going with a company you already know and are happy with, but it's worth bearing in mind that you may struggle to find another company to maintain a CF site if you ever need to. Lots of developers will know there way around a Magento site and be able to maintain it quickly and cost effectively, I wouldn't imagine the same is true for a CF alternative, but I might be wrong.
There's a lot to be said for going with a company you already know and are happy with, but it's worth bearing in mind that you may struggle to find another company to maintain a CF site if you ever need to. Lots of developers will know there way around a Magento site and be able to maintain it quickly and cost effectively, I wouldn't imagine the same is true for a CF alternative, but I might be wrong.
I would say the biggest issue long-term will be the availability of people who can work on it. I haven't come across anyone developing in Cold Fusion for a long time; if it does start to drop off the radar altogether then yes, there's no reason why your site would stop working, but finding anyone to do maintenance / new features etc. could get tricky.
Accelebrate said:
If Register1 can provide hosting at a competitive price then that's great. Might be worth pricing a few other CF hosting plans just so that you know what to expect if you ever need to move away from them. I'm not personally a fan of ColdFusion but more for reasons that don't really affect you as a client, if your company are competent then they should be able to achieve anything you'd expect of a PHP/.NET/whatever site in CF, be it SEO a redesign to render a new type of HTML or whatever.
There's a lot to be said for going with a company you already know and are happy with, but it's worth bearing in mind that you may struggle to find another company to maintain a CF site if you ever need to. Lots of developers will know there way around a Magento site and be able to maintain it quickly and cost effectively, I wouldn't imagine the same is true for a CF alternative, but I might be wrong.
These is possibly the two reasons I worry a little. However, not so much on the maintenance of the site, more so the SEO. Hosting and maintaining the site shouldn't be a problem from Jamie's POV, but how is it the SEO company will be able to consistently manage my site with the required fields? Maybe I'm worrying and reading into this too much?There's a lot to be said for going with a company you already know and are happy with, but it's worth bearing in mind that you may struggle to find another company to maintain a CF site if you ever need to. Lots of developers will know there way around a Magento site and be able to maintain it quickly and cost effectively, I wouldn't imagine the same is true for a CF alternative, but I might be wrong.
We used to use CF, many years ago, when we first started developing a data driven website instead of static. Stuck with it for a while but it soon became apparent that is was massively resource hungry for the CF Server and would not scale as quickly as our site requirements were growing. We switched to PHP for the majority of our web stuff and haven't looked back. As was said earlier, isn't it mostly dead now?
TotalControl said:
Accelebrate said:
If Register1 can provide hosting at a competitive price then that's great. Might be worth pricing a few other CF hosting plans just so that you know what to expect if you ever need to move away from them. I'm not personally a fan of ColdFusion but more for reasons that don't really affect you as a client, if your company are competent then they should be able to achieve anything you'd expect of a PHP/.NET/whatever site in CF, be it SEO a redesign to render a new type of HTML or whatever.
There's a lot to be said for going with a company you already know and are happy with, but it's worth bearing in mind that you may struggle to find another company to maintain a CF site if you ever need to. Lots of developers will know there way around a Magento site and be able to maintain it quickly and cost effectively, I wouldn't imagine the same is true for a CF alternative, but I might be wrong.
These is possibly the two reasons I worry a little. However, not so much on the maintenance of the site, more so the SEO. Hosting and maintaining the site shouldn't be a problem from Jamie's POV, but how is it the SEO company will be able to consistently manage my site with the required fields? Maybe I'm worrying and reading into this too much?There's a lot to be said for going with a company you already know and are happy with, but it's worth bearing in mind that you may struggle to find another company to maintain a CF site if you ever need to. Lots of developers will know there way around a Magento site and be able to maintain it quickly and cost effectively, I wouldn't imagine the same is true for a CF alternative, but I might be wrong.
miniman said:
TotalControl said:
Accelebrate said:
If Register1 can provide hosting at a competitive price then that's great. Might be worth pricing a few other CF hosting plans just so that you know what to expect if you ever need to move away from them. I'm not personally a fan of ColdFusion but more for reasons that don't really affect you as a client, if your company are competent then they should be able to achieve anything you'd expect of a PHP/.NET/whatever site in CF, be it SEO a redesign to render a new type of HTML or whatever.
There's a lot to be said for going with a company you already know and are happy with, but it's worth bearing in mind that you may struggle to find another company to maintain a CF site if you ever need to. Lots of developers will know there way around a Magento site and be able to maintain it quickly and cost effectively, I wouldn't imagine the same is true for a CF alternative, but I might be wrong.
These is possibly the two reasons I worry a little. However, not so much on the maintenance of the site, more so the SEO. Hosting and maintaining the site shouldn't be a problem from Jamie's POV, but how is it the SEO company will be able to consistently manage my site with the required fields? Maybe I'm worrying and reading into this too much?There's a lot to be said for going with a company you already know and are happy with, but it's worth bearing in mind that you may struggle to find another company to maintain a CF site if you ever need to. Lots of developers will know there way around a Magento site and be able to maintain it quickly and cost effectively, I wouldn't imagine the same is true for a CF alternative, but I might be wrong.
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