Note: This blog post is from 2008. Some content may be outdated--though not necessarily. Same with links and subsequent comments from myself or others. Corrections are welcome, in the comments. And I may revise the content as necessary.

CFML Caching Tools

• CF_Accelerate, free, from Brandon Purcell's (Inspired by older CF_SuperCache). There's also a variant based on that, by Tom Dyson, to support file-based caching
• CF_CacheOMatic, free, from Eric Jansson (as discussed in and downloadable from a devX article)
• CF_TurboCache, free, from HotFusion
• cfmemcached, open source, from Jon Hirschi
• JohnnyCache, open source, from Andy Powell
• ScopeCache, open source, from Ray Camden
• I welcome additions/corrections/feedback.

About this series

This entry is part of an ongoing series, sharing each of the 100+ categories and the tools and resources I (and others) have identified. They're designed to answer the questions we hear, like , "does anyone know of tools or resources to help with ...?"

I've decided to start offering each category here as a blog entry, to give the list more exposure and to make sure I'm not missing anything. For now I'm offering each day one list from the resources and then another from the tools categories. To see the list of all categories, see Part 1 of this series. I may in the future offer an RSS feed of any updates made to the list.

I hope people will get great value out of the lists, here or on the tools and resources page. Please try to remember to point the list out to people you see asking for these kind of tools and resources. Thanks.

Additions/Corrections

The tools/resources list is a perpetual work in progress. I definitely welcome additions or corrections to it. If you have any to offer, you can leave them here as a comment on this blog entry and I'll move them to the list on my site.

BTW, before you offer an update here, please do check the category on the real list. I won't be coming back here to update these blog entries to sync them if I add new items to the real list.

Next up will be a category from the Resources section, CFML Frameworks/Methodologies. There are a lot more than you may think.

Note: This blog post is from 2008. Some content may be outdated--though not necessarily. Same with links and subsequent comments from myself or others. Corrections are welcome, in the comments. And I may revise the content as necessary.

CFML Documentation/Help Tools and Resources

While the Adobe docs are the best source for CFML documentation, there are online versions of that both from Adobe and others, providing access to the docs in various ways. Please note, though, that while most of the other resources show only the CFML reference, the actual Adobe docs contain more than just the CFML Reference, including a Developer's Guide, Installation Guide, Administration Guide, and more. See the Livedocs for more on those.

• Adobe Livedocs, for CF7
• Adobe Livedocs, for CF8
• CFQuickDocs, by Jacob Munson
• CF Docs on Air, by Brian Love (If not working, try google cache version)
• CFML Docs for IPod, by Randy Nielsen of the Adobe docs team
• CF8 Help files for Eclipse, from Adobe
• ColdFusionDocs, by Anuj Gakhar
• Complete List of CF tags, for 7 and 8, by Andy Jarrett
• Pete Frietag's ColdFusion Cheat Sheet
• I welcome additions/corrections/feedback.

About this series

This entry is part of an ongoing series, sharing each of the 100+ categories and the tools and resources I (and others) have identified. They're designed to answer the questions we hear, like , "does anyone know of tools or resources to help with ...?"

I've decided to start offering each category here as a blog entry, to give the list more exposure and to make sure I'm not missing anything. For now I'm offering each day one list from the resources and then another from the tools categories. To see the list of all categories, see Part 1 of this series. I may in the future offer an RSS feed of any updates made to the list.

I hope people will get great value out of the lists, here or on the tools and resources page. Please try to remember to point the list out to people you see asking for these kind of tools and resources. Thanks.

Additions/Corrections

The tools/resources list is a perpetual work in progress. I definitely welcome additions or corrections to it. If you have any to offer, you can leave them here as a comment on this blog entry and I'll move them to the list on my site.

BTW, before you offer an update here, please do check the category on the real list. I won't be coming back here to update these blog entries to sync them if I add new items to the real list.

Next up later today will be CFML Caching Tools.

Note: This blog post is from 2008. Some content may be outdated--though not necessarily. Same with links and subsequent comments from myself or others. Corrections are welcome, in the comments. And I may revise the content as necessary.

CFMAIL Replacements/Enhancements

• ActivMail, once commercial, now to be open source, from Zrinity (formerly from CFDev)
• InFusion Mail Server (IMS) and FusionMail, commercial (with free Developer edition), from CoolFusion
• Spoolmail, open source, from Ray Camden
  • Nice review of/introduction to it by Sam Farmer
• See also the Adobe Developer's exchange on tags/functions/apps related to CFMAIL, though it may contain very old variants that no longer work or are supported
• See also Brian Rinaldi's Open Source CF list of Email tools
• Note, as well, that the CFMAIL tag itself has evolved significantly over the years, so some of the various alternatives may not always be needed. 6.1 added replyto/failto/username/password/wraptext attributes, support for multiple mail servers in the server attribute, and several configuration options to the ColdFusion Administrator Mail Settings page. 6.1 also added support for HTML email via CFMAILPARAM and multipart email with CFMAILPART. You can even optionally not use the spooling process via an optional SpoolEnable as of 6. Finally CF 8 added priority, useSSL, and useTLS attributes.
• I welcome additions/corrections/feedback.

About this series

This entry is part of an ongoing series, sharing each of the 100+ categories and the tools and resources I (and others) have identified. They're designed to answer the questions we hear, like , "does anyone know of tools or resources to help with ...?"

I've decided to start offering each category here as a blog entry, to give the list more exposure and to make sure I'm not missing anything. For now I'm offering each day one list from the resources and then another from the tools categories. To see the list of all categories, see Part 1 of this series. I may in the future offer an RSS feed of any updates made to the list.

I hope people will get great value out of the lists, here or on the tools and resources page. Please try to remember to point the list out to people you see asking for these kind of tools and resources. Thanks.

Additions/Corrections

The tools/resources list is a perpetual work in progress. I definitely welcome additions or corrections to it. If you have any to offer, you can leave them here as a comment on this blog entry and I'll move them to the list on my site.

BTW, before you offer an update here, please do check the category on the real list. I won't be coming back here to update these blog entries to sync them if I add new items to the real list.

Next up tomorrow will be CFML Documentation/Help Tools and Resources and CFML Caching Tools.

Note: This blog post is from 2008. Some content may be outdated--though not necessarily. Same with links and subsequent comments from myself or others. Corrections are welcome, in the comments. And I may revise the content as necessary.

• Adobe Max, organized by Adobe (location varies)
• cf.objective(), organized by Jared Rypka-Hauer, et al (Minneapolis-St. Paul, MN, USA)
• CFDevCon, organized by Russ Michaels (London, England)
• CFUnited, organized by Michael Smith et al (Washington, DC, USA)
• Scotch on the Rocks, organized by Andy Allan, et al (Edinburgh, Scotland)
• Spring
  , organized by Dave Hannum, et al (Athens, OH, USA)
• WebDU, organized by Geoff Bowers, et al (Sydney, Australia)
• WebManiacs, organized by Steve Drucker et al (Washington, DC, USA)
• See also Teratech's list of Upcoming CFML conferences

About this series

This entry is part of an ongoing series, sharing each of the 100+ categories and the tools and resources I (and others) have identified. They're designed to answer the questions we hear, like , "does anyone know of tools or resources to help with ...?"

I've decided to start offering each category here as a blog entry, to give the list more exposure and to make sure I'm not missing anything. For now I'm offering each day one list from the resources and then another from the tools categories. To see the list of all categories, see Part 1 of this series. I may in the future offer an RSS feed of any updates made to the list.

I hope people will get great value out of the lists, here or on the tools and resources page.

Additions/Corrections

The tools/resources list is a perpetual work in progress. I definitely welcome additions or corrections to it. If you have any to offer, you can leave them here as a comment on this blog entry and I'll move them to the list on my site.

BTW, before you offer an update here, please do check the category on the real list. I won't be coming back here to update these blog entries to sync them if I add new items to the real list.

Next up later today will be CFMAIL Replacements/Enhancements.

Note: This blog post is from 2008. Some content may be outdated--though not necessarily. Same with links and subsequent comments from myself or others. Corrections are welcome, in the comments. And I may revise the content as necessary.

Returning to the tools section, and continuing in alphabetical order, the next category is Bug/Defect Tracking Tools.

Bug/Defect Tracking Tools

I've split this list into those written in CFML, and the rest, both open source and commercial.

Written in CFML

• cfdefect open source, from Qasim Rasheed (also at http://code.google.com/p/cfdefect/)
• Lighthouse Pro, open source, from Ray Camden
• Project Tracker, open source, from Joe Danziger
• Skweegee, open source, from Russ Johnson
• See also Brian Rinaldi's Open Source CF list of bug tracking tools
• I welcome additions/corrections/feedback.

Written in other than CFML (some downloadable, others as services; some open source, others commercial)

• Bugzilla, open source, from Mozilla
• Eventum, open source, from MySQL
• Fogbugz, commercial, from Fog Creek Software
• Gemini (for .NET, commercial, with free 5-user license), from Countersoft
• Jira, commercial, from Atlassian
• Mantis, open source, from MantisBT
• OnTime, commercial, with free single-user license, from Axosoft
• Rational BuildForge, commercial, from IBM
• Scarab, open source
• TestTrack Pro, commercial, from SeaPine
• Trac, open source
• Also, note that Mylyn, free, for Eclipse, offers intergration to popular defect tracking tools
• I welcome additions/corrections/feedback.

Additions/Corrections

This tools/resources list is a perpetual work in progress. I definitely welcome additions or corrections to it. If you have any to offer, you can leave them here as a comment on this blog entry and I'll move them to the list on my site.

BTW, before you offer an update here, please do check the category on the real list. I won't be coming back here to update these blog entries to sync them if I add new items to the real list.

About this series

This entry is part of an ongoing series, sharing each of the 100+ categories and the tools and resources I (and others) have identified. They're designed to answer the questions we hear, like , "does anyone know of tools or resources to help with ...?"

Someone may ask why I'm blogging each of these categories, when they're available online anyway. It's just that, through aggregation and feeds, blogs present a way to reach a wider (and new) audience who may not otherwise come across the list of tools and resources. This also widens the pool of eyes for possible updates to the list. I want it to be as accurate and up to date as possible. I may in the future offer an RSS feed of any updates made to the list.

Otherwise, I hope people will get great value out of the lists, here or on the tools and resources page.

Note: This blog post is from 2008. Some content may be outdated--though not necessarily. Same with links and subsequent comments from myself or others. Corrections are welcome, in the comments. And I may revise the content as necessary.

Today I'll jump from the tools section of the list back to the resources section. This entry is about CFML Certification Preparation Resources.

I'd like to ask that we don't use this blog entry as a place to reopen up the old debate about the value of certification. I'm just point out resources, not judging the value of certs (or the resources). Please fight the urge... (I'm betting someone with a short attention span will have skipped this text and will do it anyway.)

CFML Certification Preparation Resources

The tools mentioned here are still only oriented toward CF 7, so if you're looking for CF8-specific information, the best bet is the CFML documentation.

• Adobe ColdFusion Certification site (including exam guidelines, example questions, and information on registering to take the exams)
• CFMX ExamBuster, commercial by inexpensive, from Centrasoft. The leading product in the space of CFML exam preparation.
• ColdFusion MX 7 Certified Developer Study Guide, by Ben Forta
• ColdFusion Certification Resources, by Ben Nadel
• ColdFusion Questions, by Charlie Griefer
• Learn by Heart CF Exam Practice
• I welcome additions/corrections/feedback.

Additions/Corrections

This tools/resources list is a perpetual work in progress. I definitely welcome additions or corrections to it. If you have any to offer, you can leave them here as a comment on this blog entry and I'll move them to the list on my site.

BTW, before you offer an update here, please do check the category on the real list. I won't be coming back here to update these blog entries to sync them if I add new items to the real list.

About this series

This entry is part of an ongoing series, sharing each of the 100+ categories and the tools and resources I (and others) have identified. They're designed to answer the questions we hear, like , "does anyone know of tools or resources to help with ...?"

Someone may ask why I'm blogging each of these categories, when they're available online anyway. It's just that, through aggregation and feeds, blogs present a way to reach a wider (and new) audience who may not otherwise come across the list of tools and resources. This also widens the pool of eyes for possible updates to the list. I want it to be as accurate and up to date as possible. I may in the future offer an RSS feed of any updates made to the list.

Otherwise, I hope people will get great value out of the lists, here or on the tools and resources page.

Note: This blog post is from 2008. Some content may be outdated--though not necessarily. Same with links and subsequent comments from myself or others. Corrections are welcome, in the comments. And I may revise the content as necessary.

I announced both of today's meetup sessions yesterday, as I do each week, but I don't bother with all the details of each talk so as not to overwhelm my readers here. I give the link to the talk's event page on the meetup site and let interested readers go view them there.

Since this is my talk, I thought my readers may benefit from a more detailed clarification of my talk today, thus this entry. Here are the details:

Leveraging RDS in Eclipse, Dreamweaver, and Homesite+/CF Studio: It's more secure and more useful than you may think

Are you using the RDS-enabled features in Eclipse, Dreamweaver, or HomeSite+/CF Studio? If not, you could be missing out on a lot of increased productivity, from the query building tools it enables, to the component browsing tools, to enabling file access across the web, and more.

Perhaps it's been disabled on your server, or people may argue that it's insecure. If you could be shown how it could be secured, might you (or your admin) reconsider it? I think it?s a tragedy how many developers suffer without leveraging RDS, certainly on their own machines, and even on shared servers.

Whether you think RDS evil or a blessing, or are unaware of what it enables in your favorite CFML editor, and whether you use CF 8 or earlier, there may be more to RDS than you realize. And there are solutions to security concerns, especially in CF8 but even beforehand.

In this talk, frequent CFUG speaker Charlie Arehart will show you all the ways that RDS can be used to make you more productive in Eclipse, Dreamweaver, or HomeSite+. He'll also address (and in some cases resolve) common security concerns, especially the multi-user RDS security available in CF 8 (and CF 4 and 5), as well as how to enable it if it's been disabled (assuming you have the right to make configuration changes, of course).

Join us online at noon. Anyone's welcome. No preregistration required (though you may want to consider it: see below.)

About the CF Meetup

In case you've missed it, the CF Meetup is an online CF user group I run. I try to have weekly meetings, with speakers all over the world. FWIW, this is only the 2nd talk I've done of the 40 talks done so far, and the first this year. Anyone's welcome to attend.

While the descriptions of meetings are held on the meetup.com site (a commercial service to help groups meet up with each other), the actual meeting is held online at http://experts.acrobat.com/cfmeetup/. Anyone may join in on the meetings. Just log in as guest (everyone should, even registered members of the group.)

If you'd like to receive email notification of the meetings, as well as have access to other resources (to give ratings, take part in polls, participate in the mailing list/forums), you can join the group at no cost, again at coldfusionmeetup.com (which redirects to our group's site on the meetup site, http://coldfusion.meetup.com/17/.)

Finally, all meetings are recorded, and the recording URL will be posted after the meeting at http://recordings.coldfusionmeetup.com.

Note: This blog post is from 2008. Some content may be outdated--though not necessarily. Same with links and subsequent comments from myself or others. Corrections are welcome, in the comments. And I may revise the content as necessary.

Today I'll jump from the resources section of the list to the tools section. It's just coincidental (well, alphabetical) that the first items in each list is about blogging (Part 2 was on CF-oriented blog aggregators.)

This entry is about CFML-based blogging tools, both downloadable and hosted.

Blogging Tools

The following are blogging tools (tools for creating a blog) that are written in CFML. Of course, you can find blogging tools written in many other languages that you may choose to use on your site (as well as hosted solutions, where the code platform doesn't matter to you). I don't want to try to keep here a list of all such CMSes, so this focuses on those that are written in CFML and that you can download. I list, after that, hosted solutions written in CFML.

• 1ssBlog, open source, from Ed Tabara
• AVBlog, open source, from Andrea Veggiani
• BlogCFC, open source, from Ray Camden
• BlogCFM, open source, from Rick Root
• CFBloggy, open source, from John Ramon (see also his blog)
• Fuseblog, open source, from James Husum (not updated in some time)
• KoldKast, free for download, and also available as a fee-based hosted solution, from Rick Smith
• MachBlog, a blogging package from Matt Woodward and Peter Farrell, and based on Mach-ii
• Mango, "a sweet ColdFusion blog engine" from Laura Arguello of asfusion
• See also Brian Rinaldi's Open Source CF list of blog tools
• I welcome additions/corrections/feedback.

There are also a few blogging solutions that, while written in CFML, are not available for download but instead are available as hosted solutions:

• Blog-City, fee-based hosted solution
• BlogFusion, free and fee-based hosted solutions, from Jake McKee
• CFBlog, free hosted solution for the CF community, powered by BlogFusion
• InstantSpot, free hosted solution, from Aaron Lynch and Dave Shuck
• KoldKast, free for download, and also available as a fee-based hosted solution, from Rick Smith
• I welcome additions/corrections/feedback.

• Amazoner, a tool to help a blogger easily recommend books that they like, using their Amazon associate ID
• LiveWriter, a desktop application from Microsoft that makes it easy to publish rich content to your blog
• Post2Blog, an alternative to LiveWriter
• I welcome additions/corrections/feedback.

Additions/Corrections

This is a perpetual work in progress. I definitely welcome additions or corrections to this list. If you have any to offer, you can leave them here as a comment on this blog entry and I'll move them to the list on the site.

BTW, before you offer an update here, please do check the category on the real list. I won't be coming back here to update these blog entries to sync them if I add new items to the real list.

About this series

This entry is part of an ongoing series, sharing each of the 100+ categories and the tools and resources I (and others) have identified. They're designed to answer the questions we hear, like , "does anyone know of tools or resources to help with ...?"

Someone may ask why I'm blogging each of these categories, when they're available online anyway. It's just that, through aggregation and feeds, blogs present a way to reach a wider (and new) audience who may not otherwise come across the list of tools and resources. This also widens the pool of eyes for possible updates to the list. I want it to be as accurate and up to date as possible. I may in the future offer an RSS feed of any updates made to the list.

Otherwise, I hope people will get great value out of the lists, here or on the tools and resources page.

Note: This blog post is from 2008. Some content may be outdated--though not necessarily. Same with links and subsequent comments from myself or others. Corrections are welcome, in the comments. And I may revise the content as necessary.

Tools and Resources for CFers, Part 2: CFML Blog Aggregators (and bloggers)

There are literally hundreds of CFML blogs. Some are popular and known by most, while some less popular ones may well offer some hidden gem. Rather than try to list them all here, and indeed rather than you having to read them all, the following aggregators focus on CF-oriented blogs.

Some blogs are in all the aggregators, but it's worth keeping an eye on more than one. I provide as well a link to the list of all CFML blogs that each aggregator follows. This way, you can find out all the folks who blog about CF.

• CF Bloggers, which follows these blogs
• Feed Squirrel, which follows these blogs
• Full As A Goog, which follows these blogs
• MXNA, which follows these blogs

You can always find the latest version of the list above at the official site, in the category CFML Blog Aggregators (and bloggers)

Again, if you're looking for a list of all CF bloggers, note that there is no one list, but again each of the aggregators above offers a list of the blogs that they aggregate, and I've offered the links to those lists above.

Additions/Corrections

This is a perpetual work in progress. I definitely welcome additions or corrections to this list. If you have any to offer, you can leave them here as a comment on this blog entry and I'll move them to the list on the site.

BTW, before you offer an update here, please do check the category on the real list. I won't be coming back here to update these blog entries to sync them if I add new items to the real list.

About this series

This entry is part of an ongoing series, sharing each of the 100+ categories and the tools and resources I (and others) have identified. They're designed to answer the questions we hear, like , "does anyone know of tools or resources to help with ...?"

Someone may ask why I'm blogging each of these categories, when they're available online anyway. It's just that, through aggregation and feeds, blogs present a way to reach a wider (and new) audience who may not otherwise come across the list of tools and resources. This also widens the pool of eyes for possible updates to the list. I want it to be as accurate and up to date as possible. I may in the future offer an RSS feed of any updates made to the list.

Otherwise, I hope people will get great value out of the lists, here or on the tools and resources page.

Note: This blog post is from 2008. Some content may be outdated--though not necessarily. Same with links and subsequent comments from myself or others. Corrections are welcome, in the comments. And I may revise the content as necessary.

It lets you package a set of files into an EXE which when run will show customized text prompts at the start and end, let the user pick the directory into which to extract, run a selected command at the start or end, and even optionally show a license they must agree to.

It turns out it's a feature that was implemented as part of the IE 6 Administration Kit (thus the IE part of the IExpress name), but I just tried it on Vista (with only IE 7 installed) and it worked just fine. Pretty nifty.

For more, see this blog entry at the awesome "Confessions of a Freeware Junkie" site. He also links there to a MS page that discusses the tool in more detail.