Loading site configuration from ini file
What kind of things are you looking to improve? Your solution looks pretty straightforward. The only problem with an ini file is that ColdFusion can't instantly/natively parse it. Whereas XML/JSON can be parsed directly into a Coldfusion Struct.

&lt;cfscript&gt;
public struct function loadini( required string configFile) {
    var stResult = {};
    var iniFilePath = "#GetDirectoryFromPath(GetBaseTemplatePath())##arguments.configfile#";
    var stSection = getProfileSections(iniFilePath);

    // loop over the sections
     for (section in stSection) {
        // loop over the list of variables in the ini file
        for (var i=0;i&lt;=listLen(stSection[section]);i++) {
            // result.section.variable = value 
            stResult[section][listGetAt(stSection[section],i)] = GetProfileString(iniFilePath, section, listGetAt(stSection[section],i) ) ;
        }
     }
    return stResult;        
}
&lt;/cfscript&gt;

&lt;cfdump var="#loadini('test.ini')#"&gt;