Here's a quick visual walk through for installing ColdFusion 10 in Server Configuration with Apache as the web server on Windows.

Launch the installer, click next.

Accept the license terms, then click next.

Enter your serial number, choose the 30-Day Trial or Developer Edition. Click next.

Choose Server configuration. If you've installed other versions of ColdFusion in the past, you'll notice that there's no longer a Multi-Server option. This is because ColdFusion 10 has standardized the install/directory structure. The Server configuration creates a single, stand-alone instance of ColdFusion with Tomcat embedded as the JEE server. From there, you can create and configure additional instances of ColdFusion from withing the ColdFusion Administrator. To proceed, click Next.

Select the services you want installed and click next.

Enter a username and password for the remote server administration account. Click next.

A new feature in ColdFusion 10 will check the strength of the password you entered and make recommendations if it's found to be weak. Click yes if you want to modify the password you entered. If you want to ignore the warning and proceed, click No.

If you are installing ColdFusion 10 alongside a previous version, you may get a screen telling you that a previous version of the .Net service has been detected. Click next.

Select the directory where you want ColdFusion to install and click next.

It's now time to configure Apache as our web server. Click Add.

Select Apache as the web server.

Find the location of your Apache /conf directory:

Find the location of your Apache httpd.exe file:

Make sure everything is correct and click OK.

You should now have the configuration setup for Apache. Click next.

Enter a password to restrict access to the ColdFusion Administrator. Click next.

The password strength dialog may appear again. Click Yes to change your password or No to accept the one you just entered.

Choose whether or not you want to enable RDS. If you do enable it, provide a password. Click next when you are done.

You may get the password strength dialog again. Click Yes to change your password or No to accept the one you just entered.

If you want ColdFusion to automatically check for updates, check this box. This is a new feature in ColdFusion 10 and I highly recommend it. The check only occurs when you log into the ColdFusion Administrator. When you are done, click Next to proceed.

Review the information for the install. Click Install when you're ready to go.

The installer will now move through a series of screens highlighting features as the program installs.

You'll be greeted with a success message when the installer has completed. Click on the Done button to launch the ColdFusion Administrator and complete the install process.

You should now see the Configuration and Settings Migration Wizard in your browser. This step will completely your server configuration and migrate settings from any previous versions of ColdFusion the wizard detects. You'll need to enter the password you provided for the ColdFusion Administrator. Once you're ready, click Login.

You'll see a screen letting you know configuration is proceeding. The process can take several minutes.

When the process is complete, you can click Ok to launch the ColdFusion Administrator.

Congratulations, you've successfully installed ColdFusion 10 with Apache as your web server.

To see what changes ColdFusion 10 made to your Apache configuration, open your Apache http.conf file. You should see the following at the bottom of the file:

view plain print about
1# Load mod_jk module
2Include "C:\Program Files (x86)\Apache Software Foundation\Apache2.2\conf\mod_jk.conf"

This directive tells Apache to load up the ColdFusion Tomcat/Apache connector configuration from an external file called mod_jk.conf. Go ahead and take a look at that file (I've added spacing to make it easier to read):

view plain print about
1# Load mod_jk module
2LoadModule jk_module "C:\ColdFusion10\config\wsconfig\1\mod_jk.so"
3
4# Where to find workers.properties
5JkWorkersFile "C:\ColdFusion10\config\wsconfig\1\workers.properties"
6
7JkMountFile "C:\ColdFusion10\config\wsconfig\1\uriworkermap.properties"
8
9# Where to put jk logs
10JkLogFile "C:\ColdFusion10\config\wsconfig\1\mod_jk.log"
11
12# Where to put jk shared memory
13JkShmFile "C:\ColdFusion10\config\wsconfig\1\jk_shm"
14
15# Set the jk log level [debug/error/info]
16JkLogLevel info
17
18# Select the timestamp log format
19JkLogStampFormat "[%a %b %d %H:%M:%S %Y] "
20
21AddHandler jakarta-servlet .cfm .cfml .cfc .cfr .cfswf
22
23Alias /CFIDE "C:\ColdFusion10\cfusion\wwwroot\CFIDE"
24
25<Directory "C:\ColdFusion10\cfusion\wwwroot\CFIDE">
26Options Indexes FollowSymLinks
27AllowOverride None
28Order allow,deny
29Allow from all
30</Directory>
31
32<Files ~ ".hbmxml$">
33Order allow,deny
34Deny from all
35</Files>

This file sets up various mapping and configuration options as well as maps the location for ColdFusion's /CFIDE directory. Note that it places /CFIDE inside of ColdFusion 10's default webroot. It's generally not a good idea to expose your /CFIDE directory to everyone. There are many ways to secure your /CFIDE directory. For specifics, see Pete Freitag's ColdFuion Lockdown Guide.

That's about it for the install. In my next post, I'll be showing how you can extend this installation to include multiple instances of ColdFusion, each with multiple Apache virtual hosts.