Before Installation questions

Question

I hope that someone can assist in telling me or leading me in
the direction that I am in need of.
I have been working with various coding for the web for a few
years now, but not unitil now have I had the oppertunity to work in
a smaller office were I have control over the web site. In my past
positions I have always had to write the code and publish it
directly to a staging server. Now at my new position we have a
external ISP that holds our files and I just FTP the newer files
there. My questions fall under two categories, one being ColdFusion
MX7 and Contribute, dealing with an internal instead of an external
application use.
1st I will go over the ColdFusion:
We have an internal server(s) that is our file server(Win2K).
I would like to run Contribute so that I can create internal files
and have the access to certain personnal that may update the
page(s). In my understanding I will need some type of Web Server to
run Contribute on. I have never installed a Web Server so I am not
sure what I am getting myself into.
1. Can ColdFusion MX 7 be loaded onto a regular file server?
2. How difficult is this to load and configure (what type of
information may I need)
3. Will ColdFusion always run in the background or will I
have to start the application each time?
4. Can I access the Admin tool from my desk instead of going
to the server and logging in?
Contribute:
1. Can Contribute be loaded onto a regular file server?
2. Can Contribute be loaded on my local machine without
loading it to the server?
All files that I will be working with and letting people
access will be all internal and nothing going out to the Internet.
Basically I am trying to start up a Intranet for our company but
first I would like to get the Contribute up and running first.
I have reviewed the Live Docs as well as many pages of the
Fourm but have not really seen anything that points out "Loading
ColdFusion For Dummies"

Answer 1

Let me answer your questions regarding ColdFusion.
- Yes, you can load ColdFusion on your file server. You
mentioned it is Win2K and ColdFusion does support this platform.
- In majority of the cases installation is a simple process
which takes about 3-5 minutes. Sometimes issues might arise
depending on your current configuration, installation file and so
on. If any problems like that happen, you can open up free
installation support case with us. As for configuration, it all
depends what you need to achieve. Creating datasources for example
is not going to take much time, but creating verity collections
might be a little longer.
- By default ColdFusion processes will always start when you
start your system. You can definitely change that in Windows
Services, by changing the type of the process from Automatic to
Manual.
- Yes, you can access ColdFusion Administrator from your
desktop because it is web-based utility which will have specific
URL address and can be accessed from anywhere on the Internet
(unless you decide otherwise and put it on separate port number and
restrict access to that port).