Adobe ColdFusion Is STILL Alive and Kicking Butt for Law Firm Websites

I was talking to my good friend and longtime client Len Spada (founder of Spada Law Group LLC) the other day, and he brought up a few questions that I’ve been hearing from lawyers over and over again since the ‘90s: 

“Is Adobe ColdFusion dead? Should I be worried about having a site built with ColdFusion?”

I’m here to tell you—just like I told him—that the answer is STILL an emphatic NO. 

There’s absolutely no doubt in my mind that ColdFusion is still very, very much alive and thriving. It’s still the choice for tens of thousands of websites, and it’s been used to create internal and external websites for major entities like Bank of America, BMW, Boeing, Mayo Clinic, Hasbro, NASA, the United States Senate, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, and tons of others. 

And it’s not like it’s some kind of “rinky-dink” platform for website development. If you look around, you’ll see that Adobe absolutely dominates the creative end of the internet, and running with ColdFusion means that you’re running with the big dogs. 

So, knowing all that, you can imagine why I was a little shocked to hear these questions from Len. 

Myths About ColdFusion Have Been Scaring Off Lawyers for Over 20 Years

Len is the first to admit that he’s a bit of a novice when it comes to technology. He likes to set the North Star and let the experts do the rest for him, and it’s a strategy that has paid off for him. He’s been a “perfect client” with FWM for years, and he’s been doing awesome. Just this past year, he was up over 50 percent, and—at the time of this writing—he just signed on for another year. He tells me that he loves us, loves our team, and loves the results he gets. 

So, I really had to stop and think when he suddenly came to me with “some questions about technology.” I answered his questions, just like I will for you below. But then I had to ask WHY this was coming up for him all of a sudden. 

As it turns out, Len wasn’t coming to me because he was having problems with his website or seeing any kind of decline in his results. Instead, he came to me because he’d heard something that struck a little fear into his heart, and that was this old myth that has been circulating in the marketing industry for literally decades at this point. 

That myth is that Adobe ColdFusion is dead.

This claim is ridiculous, but I don’t expect you to know that. You’re not a tech guru, and you’re not coding your own website or playing with development platforms. You’re a lawyer! 

But I also totally understand why this question comes up with each new cycle of this bizarre and persistent myth. You—just like any other entrepreneur out there—want to know that what you have works. You want to know that it will keep working for you. And you want to know that you’re in good hands and won’t suddenly get left high and dry. Of course! I’m right there with you!

Questions about ColdFusion and your law firm’s website? Let’s talk about it.

We’re Always Looking for the Best Options That Give the Best Results to Our Clients 

I chose Adobe ColdFusion because it’s an awesome language, and we use it to make awesome things. It’s intuitive, powerful, and supported by a dedicated team of exceptional developers at Adobe, giving us greater interoperability and reliability. Over the years, it has become more powerful, more robust, and even easier to use, which means that we can create better custom websites for your law firm more quickly.  

So, ultimately, the answer is that it works well for us and our clients, and we have yet to see a convincing reason NOT to use Adobe ColdFusion. 

You can learn more about why we use ColdFusion here. 

Now It’s Time to Bust Some Major Myths About ColdFusion and Law Firm Websites!

When I get questions about why we use Adobe ColdFusion for all our websites, the following two myths are the most common motivators: 

“But Doesn’t Google Prefer WordPress Sites Over ColdFusion Sites?!”

There’s a vicious rumor that Google somehow prefers WordPress sites over ColdFusion sites or ranks them more highly, but that’s pretty easy to clear up. 

Google’s Search Advocate John Mueller said in a 2022 installment of the Ask Googlebot series, “As far as I know, our search systems don’t look for any particular content management system to treat it differently. For us, a CMS is just one way of creating webpages. Google systems don’t focus on how the page was created. Instead, they focus on the final result.”

This comes after he also quashed this rumor in November 2021:

"CMS's for the web all make HTML pages in one form or another. There's nothing inherently making one generator better for SEO than any other. Google Search doesn't know/track if a page comes from WordPress, FrontPage, or an artisan code-foundry."

You can learn more about WordPress versus ColdFusion here.

It is 100% clear that Google in no way prefers one platform over another. Instead, it’s all about what you and your experts choose to DO with any given platform. It is not a ranking factor, and WordPress sites don’t inherently rank higher than ColdFusion sites in any way. 

“Will ColdFusion Mean That My Website Suddenly Stops Working Someday?!”

Absolutely not! If there’s any indication that ColdFusion won’t be reliable or won’t make the best websites for our clients, we’ll move on to something that will tick all those boxes. And we’ll do it with plenty of time and warning for anyone affected. 

Keep in mind that ColdFusion is an Adobe product, and Adobe is responsible for the top-ranking creative applications that drive all the creativity you see on the internet. It’s updated and expanded regularly, and there’s no indication whatsoever that it’s in trouble in any way.

So, there’s absolutely no reason to worry that you’ll wake up one day to a “dead” website. It’s just not happening. ColdFusion is fully supported and here to stay.  

Other Platforms for Law Firm Websites Don’t Offer Any Benefit Over Adobe ColdFusion

The craziest part of all this unfounded fear-mongering about ColdFusion is that law firms are changing website providers based on this rumor. And that usually means that they’re moving on to platforms that don’t offer any additional benefit over ColdFusion and just don’t work as well in practice.

So, don’t get caught up in the completely, utterly, 100% false claims about Adobe ColdFusion and your website. Instead, keep looking at your website’s performance, speed, security, lead generation, and all the other indicators that you’re doing great and exactly where you need to be. 

We’re a tech company at heart, and we take these issues very seriously. If something changes in the future that makes ColdFusion a lesser choice, you know we’ll be on top of it—and you’ll be the first to hear about it!

Still not sure if a website built on Adobe ColdFusion is right for you? Schedule a quick chat with my team, and we’ll be happy to answer any questions or concerns you may have.