.cfm files are something called Cold Fusion, an application server made by Allaire Corp. http://www.allaire.com. It's how the mudcat works now. Anything that is a .cfm file (everything on the mudcat) is dynamic and active, which means essentially that its content comes out of a database or from a cookie or some other source. This is handy for a lot of reasons. Its like any programming language really. Its also very much like html but you can do ifs and elses, loops, queries, set variables, just about anything any language can do. For instance, backround colors, banners, anything used throughout the site can be set as a variable. So if I wanted to change the color scheme of the whole site, all I would have to do is change the value of a parameter rather than edit each page (207 on the mudcat). Most content is stored in a database (all of the forum). You can clearly see this by going into any thread (12881 threads as of now) and its always thread.cfm that you are looking at.

We have some long term plans to phase out Cold Fusion and make everything work with Perl, but that could take some serious time. The best thing about Cold Fusion as far as I am concerned is that its the fastest way to code available on the market today (Its Easy). That is, I can take an idea and make it reality faster with Cold Fusion than anything. It also happens to be the only language that I know.