3 ms·

Facebook May Have Once Used Coldfusion

10 points by cutler 6y ago

Although Facebook is commonly identified as a PHP site there exists an archived version of Facebook's home page built with Coldfusion: https://web.archive.org/web/20120620044923/http://www.facebook.com/index.cfm . Ph.D researcher and Coldfusion consultant Karl Simanonok also remembers seeing index.cfm in the address bar when analysing an early version of Facebook around late 2004/early 2005 and recognised use of the Fusebox framework which he had used in his consulting work.

wilsocr88 6y ago
I love the phrasing of the headline. At first it sounds almost accusatory. Caught red handed! :) MySpace was in Coldfusion, I'm pretty sure, so maybe they were playing with that at some point.
densone 6y ago
I am not sure about this but am 100% MySpace used cold fusion on login.
- Raed667 6y ago
  I watched a documentary about MySpace a while back and at some point the majority of their code was ColdFusion. The initial proof-of-concept was coded in around 10 days and then they got stuck with it for a while until they moved to .NET ~2005
hbcondo714 6y ago
Just like MySpace: https://www.forbes.com/sites/stephenwunker/2011/07/25/4-morals-from-myspaces-fall https://www.forbes.com/sites/stephenwunker/2011/07/25/4-mora...
nickclaw 6y ago
Does everyone else see a 404 page at the archive.org link? That's the same thing you get today when you try to access /index.cfm so I don't see how this is any evidence of Facebook using Coldfusion.
- cutler 6y ago
  The page contains a "This content is currently unavailable" notice but the fact that it's been archived as index.cfm suggests there was once a Coldfusion page containing content. One complicating factor is that, although I don't know Coldfusion intimately, I understand index.cfm often operates the way index.php does in older PHP frameworks, ie. as the root of a query string for all the routes in the site.
  - nickclaw 6y ago
    The archive.org entry for 2012 is orange, indicating it was a 404 back when it was archived. There's also archived pages for /index.php that resolve successfully all the way back to 2005. Maybe someone just manually asked archive.org to crawl that URL.
    - cutler 6y ago
      Not sure what you mean by orange.
      - nickclaw 6y ago
        Sorry I could have been clearer. The archive.org page that shows all scans[1] will mark dates as orange (4xx), green (3xx), or blue (presumably 2xx). The reason I don't think that the link you posted is indicative of something is that all the scans of that url resulted in 4xx's. As opposed to scans of index.php[2] which primarly show 2xx responses. Any framework, Coldfusion or not, will generally throw a 404 when you hit paths that don't exist. [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20120801000000*/http://www.facebook.com/index.cfm https://web.archive.org/web/20120801000000*/http://www.faceb... [2] https://web.archive.org/web/20120801000000*/http://www.facebook.com/index.php https://web.archive.org/web/20120801000000*/http://www.faceb...
        cutler 6y ago
        But wouldn't an index.cfm have existed at some point for the archive to flag specific years with an entry? It's the archive doing the scanning, not me.

10 points by cutler 6y ago

wilsocr88 6y ago

I love the phrasing of the headline. At first it sounds almost accusatory. Caught red handed! :) MySpace was in Coldfusion, I'm pretty sure, so maybe they were playing with that at some point.

densone 6y ago

I am not sure about this but am 100% MySpace used cold fusion on login.

Raed667 6y ago
I watched a documentary about MySpace a while back and at some point the majority of their code was ColdFusion. The initial proof-of-concept was coded in around 10 days and then they got stuck with it for a while until they moved to .NET ~2005

hbcondo714 6y ago

Just like MySpace: https://www.forbes.com/sites/stephenwunker/2011/07/25/4-morals-from-myspaces-fall https://www.forbes.com/sites/stephenwunker/2011/07/25/4-mora...

nickclaw 6y ago

Does everyone else see a 404 page at the archive.org link? That's the same thing you get today when you try to access /index.cfm so I don't see how this is any evidence of Facebook using Coldfusion.

cutler 6y ago
The page contains a "This content is currently unavailable" notice but the fact that it's been archived as index.cfm suggests there was once a Coldfusion page containing content. One complicating factor is that, although I don't know Coldfusion intimately, I understand index.cfm often operates the way index.php does in older PHP frameworks, ie. as the root of a query string for all the routes in the site.
- nickclaw 6y ago
  The archive.org entry for 2012 is orange, indicating it was a 404 back when it was archived. There's also archived pages for /index.php that resolve successfully all the way back to 2005. Maybe someone just manually asked archive.org to crawl that URL.
  - cutler 6y ago
    Not sure what you mean by orange.
    - nickclaw 6y ago
      Sorry I could have been clearer. The archive.org page that shows all scans[1] will mark dates as orange (4xx), green (3xx), or blue (presumably 2xx). The reason I don't think that the link you posted is indicative of something is that all the scans of that url resulted in 4xx's. As opposed to scans of index.php[2] which primarly show 2xx responses. Any framework, Coldfusion or not, will generally throw a 404 when you hit paths that don't exist. [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20120801000000*/http://www.facebook.com/index.cfm https://web.archive.org/web/20120801000000*/http://www.faceb... [2] https://web.archive.org/web/20120801000000*/http://www.facebook.com/index.php https://web.archive.org/web/20120801000000*/http://www.faceb...
      - cutler 6y ago
        But wouldn't an index.cfm have existed at some point for the archive to flag specific years with an entry? It's the archive doing the scanning, not me.