Since web technologies put food on the table for me, I am constantly trying to build my skillset. This requires me to learn as much about various tools as I can. One that has been in my toolbox for a long time is ColdFusion.

If you're anything like me then you find Microsoft's IIS Web Server to be a little too restrictive. In my case, I've chosen to switch to Apache as my Web Server of choice. Apache released version 2.2.3 somewhat recently, and I wanted to upgrade as soon as possible. Unfortunately ColdFusion 7 won't work with it in the version available from Adobe. Rather than go back to using an older version of Apache, I figured out how to make them play nice together. I show you how here.

The best way to begin this process is to get Apache up and running first. I usually bring up an instance with PHP5 and MySQL configured. Once you've got this taken care of get yourself a copy of the ColdFusion Application Server from Adobe's site: http://www.adobe.com/products/coldfusion/

You're also going to need the fixed version of the wsconfig.jar file in order to get your system up and running, so go ahead and download a copy from Adobe here: http://www.adobe.com/support/coldfusion/ts/documents/8001e97/wsconfig.zip

There is a lot of information about what to do with this file on Adobe's site, but after trying on multiple occasions I never got up and running by using their documentation. I've got the install down to about 10 minutes now, and I'll tell you how I do it.