index.cfm before index.php

There's a line in your Apache config somewhere that is called DirectoryIndex and it should contain all the files that can be used as the "default" file for a folder. You can change the order of preference on that line - just make index.cfm come first before index.php

No points for this comment, but if you are experimenting around with this, try index.html and see if that doesn't take precedence over the other two.  A nice feature of that kind of script ordering is that you can have an index.html and an index.php script.  The index.php script can be very elaborate, creating all kinds of neat stuff on the fly.  If you're interested in performance, and the index.php script is slow, it can capture its output buffers and write them into the index.html file.  Then you have a fast static page.  A cron job or other trigger can be used to load the index.php page, or you can simply delete the index.html page every few minutes.  Now you have a near-real-time web site with high performance.

I tried that but it didn't work.  I'm wondering if I would need to restart railo?

Did you restart Apache after updating the configuratoin? If so, there may be another DirectoryIndex directive somewhere else in your config.

yes, I restarted apache but it still reads the php file first.  I even have a index.html file in there

ok, i'll check on that.

Thanks!