Why Hire A Website Designer? 6 Reasons
Why hire a website designer?
BANG! Web Site Design will give you 6 reasons why your business needs an engaging and unique design to increase your ROI.
As an active ColdFusion Developer since 1998 (when it was still owned by Allaire, prior to being purchased by Macromedia and then Adobe) we laugh every time we hear "ColdFusion is Dead". We've used it non-stop for over two decades while other popular programming languages have come and gone.
If you are looking for ColdFusion programmers or Web Developers fluent in Adobe ColdFusion mark-up language and the many uses of ColdFusion for software development, you are in the right place. View our Web Development page for more information about our services. For more information about the ColdFusion Web Development Platform and it's history read on.
In the early days of the Internet, if you were looking to connect a website with a database to either retrieve or publish data, ColdFusion was (and still is) a great solution, perfect for such business applications. ColdFusion acts like a bridge between a web server and a database (that's a very simplistic viewpoint as it does so much more).
ColdFusion may be one of the easiest web programming languages to learn because it uses a very familiar approach that anyone using HTML will find easy to pickup.
CFM / CFML / .cfm / ColdFusion Markup Language's syntax is very easily integrated within an HTML page and learning the tag syntax is quite simple for most people. Want to send an email from a webpage? Use the cfmail tag. Want to get data from a database? Use cfquery. Want to insert data into a database? Use cfinsert. It takes very few pieces of code to produce huge results. When paying an expert web developer over $100+ dollars per hour, don't you want them working in an environment that produces results quickly?
Want to go deeper and perform more complex programming? ColdFusion is a Java programming language that allows advanced programmers to tap into their java skills to do even more.
We think so, anyway you want to read that statement (rad is slang for very appealing). RAD in this instance stands for Rapid Application Development meaning it's very easy to learn, work with, and quickly get web applications built. ColdFusion programming language, which some call a scripting language while others have called it a tag based approach, excels at building a wide range of applications for medium-sized businesses and many Government organizations still use it today.
ColdFusion was a pioneer in allowing a web page, hosted on a website server, to not only provide database access to populate a page from a content database, but also to store data from a web form into a wide range of database formats including Microsoft Access, Microsoft SQL Server, MySql, and any other database that can be reached through a JDBC driver (Java DataBase Connectivity). This is why BANG! first started using ColdFusion. We wanted client's to not only have a website, but to be able to update that website themselves using a CMS (Content Management System) we built using CFML (ColdFusion Markup Language).
These early web pages were said to be dynamic as they could be easily changed without having to know programming skills. Dynamic ColdFusion at it's best.
One of our first important web applications allowed a local car dealer to populate their website with the inventory of vehicles on the lot. A secure login allowed them to enter vehicle data into fields, write a short description and then post photos of the vehicle. This is typical of such business applications we've used ColdFusion, and now Lucee for, using rapid application development to build countless custom applications to meet a business need.
ColdFusion paired with an enterprise class database provides data analysis and data enhancement functions to be developed quickly, easily and address complex application issues.
Business listing website integrated with Google Maps API for calculating distances and showing a business location on a map. CFM plays very nicely with other API's and it's rest services make it easy. This site also allows for the storing of advertising banners to be displayed on specific pages based on the location being searched. Advertisers can manage their own listings, updating it with new photos, videos or the days special.
An application allowing an industry to sell the leads they couldn't fulfill. The website we delivered allows for easy analysis of each lead including the number of miles two locations are from each other.
Cemetery mapping & lookup application using Flash to display each grave in the cemetery. Names could be searched and we would zoom into the correct section of the cemetery and highlight the grave. Prior to us building this application the cemetery used only paper records.
CMS / Content Management Systems similar to WordPress
E-commerce applications complete with search, cart, checkout and login capabilities
E-news system allowing newsletters to be composed and sent to a list of email addresses stored in a SQL database.
A recent performance of various Internet technologies developed by Ortus Solutions shows Lucee being one of the faster web platforms, 2nd only to Go. In this testing it was twice as fast as node.js, and rails, 2.5 times faster than Laravel (a .php framework) and 5 times faster than django. Since for our SEO services, speed is important, and who wants a slow website anyway, we are pleased that are use of ColdFusion benefits us there as well.
Despite being one of the older advanced web technologies it has not stood still and now offers lots of new features and is a complete platform (at least in our history has written the book) for web development.
Mobile applications can also be built with Adobe ColdFusion and in fact, we use it to produce our responsive web design and progressive web apps.
I pulled this information from the ColdFusion Wikipedia Page
Lucee runs on Apache Tomcat in it's default deployment on the Windows platform.
Plans for Version 6 of Lucee were announced in November of 2018 at CFCAMP2018. With the first Beta release expected soon (August 2022?)
Some of the plans for the version include...
Improving startup time
Improving serverless and headless deployment
Built in support for syslog
Startup with just 1 context
Support for cfconfig
Upgrades to Hibernate
An event driven architecture
Native support for JavaStreams
Improved out of the box security
More Java integration
Single context mode (will speed up start times, changing to JSON)
Breaking of some defaults (some at least for security)
Sub-components
Query of query improvements
One of the reasons ColdFusion wasn't used more by developers in Internet technologies was the cost. From Allaire through Adobe, it's always been a paid product and the enterprise version has always been rather expensive, especially when alternatives such as .php have been free.
Lucee has successfully created a free version of ColdFusion that's open source and allows anyone to download, install and run on production servers. BANG! has been using Lucee since version 4.5 and we've been very happy with the results. Lots of ColdFusion developers have joined us in migrating to Lucee.
Lucee is well supported with a very active community and forum located at https://dev.lucee.org/. Zac Spitzer (Zackster) is the community manager and really helps keep Lucee moving forward.
One of the notable users of Lucee is NASA. So hey, if it's good enough for the organization in charge of "rocket science", then hey, it's probably good enough for you right?
ColdFusion jobs are still available, often employers are looking for a senior web developer and remote ColdFusion developer jobs are quite common. LinkedIn alone has over 600 jobs from employers looking for experienced developers with knowledge of ColdFusion development. Affordable ColdFusion talent may be a bit more of a problem as ColdFusion developers tends to be older, more experienced and demand a higher salary.
If you are looking for an established ColdfFusion development company in the United States (we are headquartered in Phoenix, AZ) why not give BANG! a try? We should certainly be on your top list of ColdFusion development companies. If you have questions about our projects, or would like to benefit from our 26 years of experience, contact us or schedule a consulting session to discuss our development process and discussion of technologies with a manager of application development expert.
Why hire a website designer?
BANG! Web Site Design will give you 6 reasons why your business needs an engaging and unique design to increase your ROI.
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