Important RIAForge Updates

Today I released two important updates to RIAForge, both thanks to Nathan Mische.

The first change is the addition of Akismet spam protection to the blogs and forums. RIAForge gets hit pretty hard by spammers, so the hope is that this will reduce some of that traffic. Yes, there is an add for Wordpress at the bottom, but for a free Akismet license, I think this is a fair trade and it will really help out project owners.

On the flip side, I've heard time and time again from visitors that we need a way to flag/rate/etc projects to help signify active projects from abandoned sites. I've said that I refuse to do this manually. We are currently at 724 released projects and there is no way I'm going to spend my time going through them and chastising project owners to update their work. (Especially when I have some 'dusty' projects myself.) Today we added a simple little modification that I think will help out. When browsing projects by category, or in search, and when viewing the detail of a project, an "active" project will have (Active) after the name. "Active" is defined as simply being updated in the past 30 days.

It isn't a perfect system - but I think it works well, especially in search. I'd like to add to this a ratings system and flag highly rated projects. So with once glance you can easily see which projects are being updated often and which have high reviews from users.

Anyway, onward and upward. Big thanks to Nathan, and hopefully the ball will keep rolling.

Please Read: Help Tim Buntel and Flex 4

I wanted to make sure my readers took the time to read Tim Buntel's latest blog post: Desperately Seeking Debbie The title may seem a bit risque, but don't be worried. Tim is looking for help from a type of developer that I think matches a large portion of my audience. If you haven't had a chance yet to look much at Flex 4, and have time in the next few days, please be sure to follow the directions on his blog post.

I'm going to be a bit vague here but let me just say that I think this is pretty important. If you can make the time and meet the persona, please contact Tim. Thank you!

What's that on RIAForge?

First off - sorry for the downtime at RIAForge this weekend. I was out of town until yesterday afternoon, and just got time to work on it today. Turned out to be kind of a silly issue. The host had contacted the account owners (other people at Adobe) about a required IP update, and I never got the news. I've made sure they know to contact me from now on so something like this shouldn't happen again.

Oh... and is it just me - or is there a new category up at RIAForge? Obviously I can't talk much about it, so please don't ask me details here, but I was told to go ahead and set it up, so perhaps it's time to start getting real excited? Pay special attention to this project, especially the screen shots. In case it isn't obvious: Yes, that's browsing and downloading RIAForge projects direct from Bolt.

CFUG Netherlands

Michael van Leest pinged me earlier in the week to let me know of a new ColdFusion User Group he is trying to start up in The Netherlands. More information may be found at his blog post.

I'd also strongly encourage folks to check out Adobe Groups. You may think there isn't a user group near you but this is the perfect place to find out for sure. Be sure to keep your options open. Our local group (Acadiana AUG) isn't ColdFusion specific, but I've loved the wide variety of topics we've been able to cover. (I hate to admit it, but one of my favorite sessions was on typography. Maybe I'm a closeted designer and I just don't realize it yet.)

New ADC Article: Using Dreamweaver, InContext Editing, and Spry to build a dynamic site

Just a quick note to say my latest Adobe Developer Center article just went live: Using Dreamweaver, InContext Editing, and Spry to build a dynamic site. Looks like I need to update the bio though. If you've never looked at, or even heard of, InContext Editing, definitely read the article. I was really pleasantly surprised by how cool it worked.

MAX 2009 Site Updated

Not much more to add to the title, but the MAX 2009 site has been updated. Once again Adobe goes for auto-play, loud video. Don't get me wrong, I think the video is cool, but seriously - who doesn't get that auto-play is normally a really bad idea? Am I the only one? (Maybe)

So bitching aside, I am happy to say that the Unconference were announced and ColdFusion will once again be featured. I don't have any details yet (we have a meeting with the MAX folks tomorrow), but I'll be posting details to the same URL I used for last year: http://www.coldfusionjedi.com/page.cfm/ColdFusion-Unconference

ColdFusion Cookbook Update

For a few years now I've run (along with Jeremy Petersen) the ColdFusion Cookbook. The idea was simple: Provide a set of very direct questions and answers to common ColdFusion problems. The site did kinda well, and we have over 150 entries, but to be honest, it could be a lot more. Adobe's Flex Cookbook has been quite a success. They have a much more open process which allows for content to be created and shared much quicker than the more rigid process we have over on the ColdFusion Cookbook.

Adobe never intended to compete with my site. They have linked to my site and helped promote it. That being said, they are moving their cookbooks to a platform that will no longer restrict the content to Flex. It isn't intentional competition, but at the same time, I think we can obviously expect ColdFusion stuff to start showing up there.

I've made the decision to shut down the existing ColdFusion Cookbook site. Admittedly I feel a bit sad about this, but frankly, I think its will help everyone. I also want to help seed the site. Adobe has said they would handle as much of the grunt work as possible, but in order to do so, they need the original authors to work with them. Ed Sullivan (esulliva@adobe.com) will help work with folks to get their content migrated. I ask that the original authors ping him, and me as well, so I can keep track of what has moved over. I don't want any content lost, so if need be, I can migrate content under my account, but with a nice, clear paragraph that credits the original author, but I only want to do that for authors who aren't around anymore or don't care.

Any thoughts on this? Obviously I could do some massive architecture updates to my own site, but it seems easier to cooperate here and help give the ColdFusion content at Adobe a huge boost. Right?

Want to learn ColdFusion?

Earlier today Kristen Schofield posted about a new curriculum available for learning ColdFusion. The curriculum consists of two PDFs (not sure if code is included, didn't see it) and the coverage appears to be quite intensive. I'm a bit puzzled by some of the choices in regard to what is considered advanced (lists are advanced?) but there is a large amount of material here - and all 100% free. You can go directly to the materials here:

http://www.adobe.com/education/instruction/teach/cfcurriculum.html

To be clear, this is not just for students. Anyone can download the PDF and start learning immediately. (One quick note for Mac users. Don't try to open the PDFs using Preview. You have to use Reader to view them.)