Why I wanted to try ColdFusion MX

I knew of ColdFusion MX back in the 2000s. I did not actually use it back then.

ColdFusion was one of those names I kept running across while I was getting interested in websites, servers, PHP, and hosting. I knew Macromedia made it, I knew .cfm pages existed, and I knew it was tied pretty closely to the web-development world of that period. That was about it.

I did not build ColdFusion sites, use Dreamweaver for CFML, administer ColdFusion servers, or have any real hands-on history with the platform. It simply stayed in the back of my mind as one of those pieces of web history I had never tried.

I finally tried it in December 2025

That curiosity eventually won. I put together an old ColdFusion MX 7 environment so I could actually see what the platform was like instead of only knowing it by name.

The old setup is interesting to me for the same reason a lot of old web software is interesting: it captures a very specific period of web development. ColdFusion Administrator, CFML tags, Dreamweaver integration, IIS, and the whole Macromedia-era workflow feel very different from the PHP tooling I was actually using at the time.

It also led me somewhere unexpected

Once I had finally seen the old version, I started wondering what had happened to CFML since then. That question is what led me to Lucee and current ColdFusion development.

So the MX material on this site is not me documenting something I used years ago. It is me exploring an old platform now, with the benefit of having spent years working with other web stacks.

The retro lab

I still keep the old environment because it is fun to compare it with what I am learning now. It stays isolated because everything in that stack is long out of support.

See the ColdFusion MX lab I built

If you are more interested in where the technology is today, see Modern CFML and Lucee.