# Mapping Directories

The Mappings page in the ColdFusion Administrator allows you to create logical aliases for physical directories on your server. Mapping directories is only necessary if you want to use ColdFusion with CGI or if you want to use absolute references to ColdFusion pages with the CFINCLUDE tag.

For information about using ColdFusion with CGI instead of one of the standard Web server APIs (NSAPI, ISAPI, Apache API, or WSAPI), see Chapter 7, "Using CGI with ColdFusion".

The Web server APIs supported by ColdFusion (NSAPI, ISAPI, Apache API, and WSAPI) perform document type mapping, which makes directory mapping in ColdFusion unnecessary. When a browser loads a file with the `.cfm` extension, the Web server recognizes that file type as a ColdFusion application page.