Posted By : Dan Wilson     February 4, 2008 8:33 AM

The ColdFusion community is full of intelligent developers who have experience on interesting areas of ColdFusion development. Many developers have blogs and share their experiences. Some do not have blogs because of the hassle in setting up a blog. You gotta get the design just right, figure out the right host for your budget, evaluate blog software, who has the time, right? Just because you are busy, doesn't mean you have nothing to say.

If that is you...

You are invited to share at ColdFusion.dzone.com. ColdFusion.dzone.com is a place where you can share your experiences, opinions, news and tutorials with the masses.

Here is what you can do...

Writing for ColdFusion.dzone.com is easy. Simply log in with your dzone.com account (OpenID also accepted), click Post Content, Choose Story and write your article. Once you submit your article, it will be editorially reviewed by one of the Zone Leaders. Once complete, your article will be available for viewing.

Here is how we all win...

We all learn tips and tricks from community articles. If you want to contribute to your community and have been putting it off for the reasons mentioned above, I invite you to share at ColdFusion.dzone.com. You get the recognition you deserve, we gain from your experiences.

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Posted By : Dan Wilson     February 4, 2008 8:10 AM

ColdFusion has been on dzone.com for a week. We've posted some very interesting articles for the dzone.com community at large. Here are the top 5:

Views: the total count of visitors that read the teaser on dzone.com.
Clicks: Traffic routed to the blog/website holding the article.

Scott Stroz can vouch for the 'dzone effect' on his post How Do You Set Up Your Development Environment?. Even though he wrote the article a little while back, his recent submission to dzone gave new exposure to a whole new crowd of developers. On his blog, it now shows 31 comments and a total of 2326 views.

Be sure and watch the new ColdFusion tagged links at dzone.com. If you like what you see, give it a vote. It is really easy and only takes a second.

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Posted By : Dan Wilson     January 30, 2008 8:29 AM

Bruce Phillips asked me about the code I used to generate the XML that feeds Surfing Stats. I wanted to look it over before I released it, thinking I would clean it up some. Plus, there was an annoying order bug I wanted to fix. I've fixed it now and am ready for others to use the code as they see fit.

How It Works

When a request comes in, statsexport.cfm looks for a value in the url scope called dataset which then is evaluated inside a large switch statement. If the passed value matches a case, then one or more queries are run. If not, the default case runs and an empty query is generated. The Blog Totals dataset actually runs a number of queries and uses the fancy Query functions in ColdFusion (QueryNew, QuerySetCell etc) to create and populate a query. (I used the queries that were in the stats.cfm page so there should be no difference between the table structure of your blog and mine.)

At the very bottom of the page we:

1. reset the content (XML hates stray whitespace)
2. convert the query to XML using queryToXML by Nathan Dintenfass
3. set the content type to text/xml
4. return the response to the client
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  ColdFISH is developed by Jason Delmore. Source code and license information available at coldfish.riaforge.org
<cfcontent reset="true" type="text/xml"><cfoutput>#queryToXML(theQuery)#</cfoutput> 1<cfcontent reset="true" type="text/xml"><cfoutput>#queryToXML(theQuery)#</cfoutput>


You can download the file using the download link at the end of this post. I've also included it in the latest SurfingStats zip file located at the download link at the bottom of the Intro to Surfing Stats post. If you make something interesting with this file, let me know.

Download

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Posted By : Dan Wilson     January 29, 2008 8:31 AM

Every day, a whole lot of useful information about ColdFusion is created and delivered over the airwaves. ColdFusion developers are passionate about their platform of choice. We know better applications are built quicker using the only commercially supported platform offering Image manipulation (by the people who make Photoshop, nonetheless), RIA, Server-side printing/PDF forms, Charting, Integration, Reporting and other libraries/frameworks. So why the occasional bad press?

After looking at the issue for some time, I've had some relevations. The majority of the developer promotion and information about ColdFusion is spread inside the ColdFusion community. Yes, friends and neighbors, we preach to the choir a bit more than we should.

Where do you get ColdFusion news from? I'd bet you answer either MXNA, Feed-Squirrel, FullAsAGoog.com or ColdFusionBloggers.org. Am I right? Those are great community resouces. I use them myself. As a matter of fact, most ColdFusion developers worth their salt use those aggregators for news. The problem is, Java developers, Perl developers, .Net developers and Ruby developers do not use those sources for their news. Thus, a tree falls in the forest, but no one is there to hear it.

What the heck is dzone?

Dzone.com consists of a variety of internet properties all focused on meeting the needs of developers. As of late, dzone.com added a ColdFusion tag to their dzone.com link sharing website. The fine folks at dzone.com also added a special zone for ColdFusion. You can see this zone at the aptly named coldfusion.dzone.com. These two websites are for you, the passionate ColdFusion developer, to get the message out. ColdFusion is the best tool on the market for quickly building feature rich web based applications.

How Dzone.com Works

At dzone.com, you can submit links of interesting posts into a pool where developers from all sorts of backgrounds can find them. Backgrounds like Java (Natural ColdFusion Converts), Perl, PHP, Python and .Net, anything really. If you come across a helpful or interesting article somewhere in your Internet travels and the link will benefit your fellow developers, add the link into the system. When others read the article you have submitted via link, they may vote it up, or down. Links with a high number of positive votes will be shown more often. This concept is sort of similar to digg. As a matter of fact, if you took out all the whining close-minded users and focused the content on only developer-centric topics, you would have a pretty good idea of what dzone.com is.

How ColdFusion.dzone.com Works

ColdFusion.dzone.com is a targeted portal for ColdFusion information. It is managed and organized by members of the community. Content on this site will remain an open community resource. From time to time, there will be interviews, special articles, announcements and other items of interest. I expect this resource to evolve as time passes.

ColdFusion.dzone.com has a few Zone Leaders. Rey Bango is one. I am another. There will be one or two more additions in the upcoming future. The responsibility of the Zone Leaders is to moderate discussions, be a point of contact for ColdFusion related matters and to review articles submitted by community members.

My Vision

It is my vision that coldFusion.dzone.com will be a resource for the ColdFusion community by providing a place to share information. We encourage quality submissions by members of the community. While not every article can be posted, we encourage those of you who want to share your experiences and lessons with the rest of the community. This is a great way to help others, get more traffic for your blog and increase your community visibility.

It is my vision that ColdFusion.dzone.com will be a resource for other communities. ColdFusion is a great language and a great platform. Not enough people know that. By having a zone full of good ColdFusion content as well as by submitting good content from the zone and from community blogs, we can help bring the reality of ColdFusion to the masses.

How You Can Participate

http://coldfusion.dzone.com/ is yours. Bookmark it now. Come here often and read the information and post content you want to share with the developer community at large. As always, feel free to add a link back to your own blog. You deserve the recognition and the traffic.

The queue of ColdFusion related content on dzone.com is something you should check often (Don't worry, there is an RSS feed). As I said before, submitted articles get votes and rise to the front page where tens of thousands of developers from all backgrounds can see, read and learn. When you see a good article in the queue, give it a vote.

The most popular ColdFusion content on dzone.com is another page to watch (RSS Feed Too). Articles that have made it to this page have proven popular and have garnered visibility for the ColdFusion community in general and the author in specific. You might want to read these articles because your peers have already voted them worthy. If you agree, give it a vote.

By sharing our love and passion for ColdFusion among other communities, we will grow the ecosystem at large. Please consider these resources as your personal way to engage the developers of the world.

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Posted By : Dan Wilson     January 22, 2008 8:27 AM

Before the end of 2007, I wanted to move closer towards my goal of being an Adobe Certified Expert and Adobe Community Expert, so I took the ColdFusion 7 Developer Exam. The exam tests expertise and competency of a ColdFusion Developer. Question topics range from Web Development to ColdFusion Product specific knowledge. The exam is 66 questions in multiple choice format.

Examinees who pass are awarded one of two titles dependent on score:

[More]

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Posted By : Dan Wilson     January 21, 2008 8:33 AM

There exists untold billions of lines of Server Side Java code running in production environments today. Java is a fine language, widely adopted and used by companies both large and small. One of the drawbacks in Java development is that Java is not a rapid development environment. Adding functionality, screens and new applications on top of an existing Java based SOA requires manpower and time.

ColdFusion is built on J2EE underpinnings. The deep Java heritage offers tremendous power and functionality. ColdFusion objects are Java objects. A ColdFusion Array is actually an instance of java.util.Vector thus you can run Vector methods directly on a ColdFusion array. It is just that simple. ColdFusion can easily create or consume SOAP webservices. ColdFusion can knit together disparate subsystems to make a unified SOA. All without fundamentally changing platforms or languages.

[More]

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Posted By : Dan Wilson     January 17, 2008 6:17 PM

The fine folks at dzone.com have added a ColdFusion tag. Now you can add your coldfusion content to dzone.com and reach millions of developers from around the world.

See ColdFusion on dzone.com

Thanks to dzone.com for adding the tag.

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Posted By : Dan Wilson     December 27, 2007 2:55 PM

One of my good friends, Rama Marupilla, showed me a recent project where he used CFGrid to make a searchable, filterable restaurant locater. Have a look at http://www.nycvisit.com/restaurantweek/.

This page is a great illustration about how the power of ColdFusion 8, in the hands of a great developer, can enable powerful and relevant functionality.

Great Job Rama, thanks for sharing!

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Posted By : Dan Wilson     December 17, 2007 10:00 AM

Model-Glue is a very powerful and robust ColdFusion Framework. When solving application problems with Model-Glue there are recurring solutions that work well for particular problems. Up until now, one would have to troll the various blogs hoping the right keywords unlocked google to reveal a proper solution. While effective, this method is also time consuming.

Todd Sharp has developed and released the Model-Glue cookbook. Following the common cookbook format, this timely and relevant application will hold collective wisdom on how to use the Model-Glue framework for fun and profit.

If you want to learn more about Model-Glue, please check the Model-Glue cookbook for interesting tips and solutions for everyday programming. It even has an RSS feed for you!

If you are a Model-Glue expert, or you have found some interesting solutions with Model-Glue, share them with the simple Entry Form. Adding an entry to the Model-Glue Cookbook is easier than blogging and you get full credit.

I admire Todd Sharp. He is an effective community leader, generous with his time and efforts. I mean, look at what he has done in just the last 3 months:

• CFEmmys
• Snip-a-thon contest
• PPTUtils Project
• cfsnippets.org
• Model-Glue Cookbook

Todd gets my vote for Most Deserving of Adobe Community Expert Status

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Posted By : Dan Wilson     November 12, 2007 3:23 PM

Hey

You can find me on the ColdFusionCommunity.org site at http://www.coldfusioncommunity.org/profile/DanWilson

Thanks

Thanks to Nick Tong for setting this up. Thanks also to CJ for encouraging me to sign up.

You mean....

You aren't on ColdFusionCommunity.org yet? Well, sign up quick, before all the free memberships are gone.

P.S.

Yes, I'll be your friend....

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