Vincent Collins’ Weblog

Yes, I’m officially 40 years old today.  I’m not nearly as sad about it as one might think.

I’m healthy and happy…What more can I ask for?

I have a client that is interested in implementing their first Intranet. They want something simple to use, which usually means something powerful behind the scenes. Also, of course, the client wants something free that can be extended by ColdFusion.

I have posted in the past about CMS options. There are many choices but but the choices narrow once you introduce CF as a requirement. I have decided to give FarCry 5.0 a shot. The last time I installed FarCry was probably 2003 so I’m willing to give it a fair shake once more.

So far, I’m impressed overall. For one thing, the 5.0 installer just works and simplifies the whole process. So many CF programs (including many of mine) require editing of text files and placing of scripts manually but FarCry seems more mature and is evidenced by the installer. I’m very impressed with this.

The look and feel of the administration back end or web top as FarCry refers to it is really nice. There was a bit of a learning curve for me at least regarding how to actually use the tool to build the structure of a website and I will go into that in a later post. That said, I was up and running pretty quickly once I got it.

The documentation seems a bit fragmented on the deamon site. I know there is a wiki for each version but it’s incomplete. I spent hours looking for answers to my questions in the form of documentation. In the end, I did happen to come across their 125 page training guide for version 4.0 which was a help. There are also eSeminars posted on deamon’s blog such as this one for version 5.0.

5.0 is still in beta, however I hit the ground running with it before I knew this since the 5.0 version is placed prominently on deamon’s home page without the warning that it is beta. Well, at least as recently as today This means that things such as site-wide search and other components aren’t working yet as I came to find out while I was developing a mockup for a client. I’ve decided to take a small risk and continue to use the 5.0 version because I’d hate to go backwards and Geoff Bowers’ recent posting eluded to the fact that this feature would be implemented in the coming weeks.

Once the software was installed, and once I had a handle on how to create top-level links with related pages with them, I was able to quickly create all the core Intranet pages in the hierarchy needed within a couple of hours. I’m now working on creating users with permissions to edit only certain sections such as Department heads editing their own departments and not others’. From what I understand, this is straight forward to do.

The challenges ahead are many such as how to embed custom CF pages and how to use the built-in functions such as RSS feeds, News, FAQs, Events and how to embed built in features like these into a FarCry page. I’m hoping it’s covered in the 4.0 manual because as I have said, the wiki is incomplete or if it is not, it seems at least hard for me to navigate. I’m also going to have to figure out how to modify the look and feel and find out how navigation works once you get 4 levels deep. Also, how the ‘create link’ function works in the webtop.

FarCry seems deep and can feel a bit daunting at times for me when I just can’t figure out how to do something I want. However, my gut here is that Deamon really has a winner on their hands and if I can figure out how to master it, I may become a bit of an evangelist for the tool because there just isn’t another software package out there written in CF that is open source and does what this one does. Well, that last statement is based on my knowledge. If you know of something else, please let me know.

Also, I would really like to hear from some of you with first-hand experience/knowledge of FarCry. It would be nice to know how others are using it and how successful you have been handing over the day to day management of a site to end users with no programming knowledge. Have you come across a tutorial you can hand end users with simple instructions on day to day maintenance, adding a page, approving a page, adding users, etc. Did you have to create something yourselves?

I’m really looking forward to hearing your comments!

There is a difference between criticism and constructive criticism.

I’m disappointed when I come across developers laughing and making fun of a code block or website design they happen to come across. I see this sort of mentality time and time again. I suppose it is easy to forget about the long path we all had to take to get to where we are. Forget about all the mistakes we made along the way and will continue to make in the future.

This is the equivalent of a bully making fun of a geek in third grade. The only difference is that in this case, the geek is the bully and should be a bit more educated and mature by now.

I know that no one’s perfect. I’m sure not. However, the next time you come across work you deem is terrible or laughable, consider the possibility that the person you are laughing about may be newer to the whole wide world of design or programming than you. They might be younger than you and just getting started. They might not have had the opportunity to go to college like you but they still want to do whatever it is they are doing. Consider the possibility that someone might be trying to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps with limited knowledge and resources.

If you still feel like laughing, keep it to yourself and go to a comedy show.

Last week I wrote an article asking the CF community for a list of open source applications they wished existed.  The resulting comments were much different than I thought they would be.

I expected a small laundry list of applications similar to what is found in the PHP world as well as suggestions to make various applications work well together.  I did get a few so far but what I didn’t expect were the discussions about the problems with the fragmentation of CF frameworks, and the overwhelming PHP and .NET installed user bases and how CF is stuck between a rock and a hard place because of this.  There is also the statement that the open source applications for CF are generally all “one man shows” and not a community of developers on a single project.

If you haven’t had a chance to jump in on the conversation, I’d love to hear your list of applications as well as your take on the various other conversations going on here.

This is a simple call to the ColdFusion community.  Thanks to the wonderful efforts by Ray, Ben Rob and others (let me know who else) we have RIAForge.  I have a simple question I’d like to pose.

We are all well aware of the many open source applications written for other languages.  What is on your much wished for short list of open source tools not yet available for ColdFusion? Or, if a tool exists but you would like another option, name it!

This is your chance to not only tell the CF community what you want, but also a chance to maybe jump in and help develop a much needed application.

This is a well thought out and clearly explained tutorial explaining how to create CSS styled buttons.

There are a million examples but his approach by using just two images and shifting the pixels up and down for pressing and releasing is a neat idea.

how-to-make-sexy-buttons-with-css

I’ve had a lot of fun putting together a new project recently.

A few weeks ago I talked about putting together a very simple tool that helped to alleviate some difficulties that our sports organization has been having. However, I realized that with a bit more thought and effort, I could build something that any youth-based organization could use.

YouthAtPlay.com (version 1.0) is now released for the first time to help serve that purpose. Anyone can create a free account and begin using the tool today. It is in its infancy of course but here is a short list of features it currently does as well as plans for the future.

In it’s simplest form, it can be used for any youth organization. Troops, Sports Organizations, Kids Event Management, School Teacher, whatever… If you need to keep track of many children and send emails to their parents, this tool could be for you.

Also, for a limited time, since this is considered a beta release, I’ll upgrade your account for free for 6 months. Just send an email to info@youthatplay.com with the words “YouthAtPlay.com Discount” in the subject line and your username.

Give it a try, you will be up and running in minutes!

http://www.YouthAtPlay.com

Just a quick public shout out to Ray Camden for making the open source tool Galleon ColdFusion Forums available to all.

Version 2.011 installed without a hitch yesterday and StellentForums.com was up and running with a brand new forum in less than 20 minutes.

I can’t say enough about how cool it is to now have so many choices for ColdFusion software, free or pay.  It’s good to be a CF Developer.

Once again, thanks Ray!

I recently joined the board of our small town youth sports association and I have set the site up using WordPress, which allows multiple users to contribute with control over permission level. Everyone is happy.

However, when it comes to actually managing the sports, teams, coaches, players and registration as well as sending emails to all or a sub-set of players, I have not found any tool that seems to do it well. I have to be honest however, I usually search for ten minutes and grow frustrated if nothing stands out quickly and just decide to build it myself. I did find a few sites offering this service for a monthly fee and some with a per user fee but we are on a shoe-string budget and I want a tool I can install on my server and manage/modify from there. Preferably it should be written in ColdFusion

Thus, I quickly put together the following CF + SQL Server application in a couple of days:

Users Table (board members and delegates)
User Role (read only, read/write, admin)
Player Table (all players of all sports, their address, DOB, Parents/Guardians, phone number(s), email(s) etc.)
Log Table (logs all actions such as updates, emails sent etc)

Currently the tool allows you to manage users, players, as well as send email announcements to all players and users that have not opted out. I’m also thinking of adding things like associated seasons, sports, coaches, and fee management. Also maybe a Board Task List. I’m wondering if there is a need for such a tool by others out there. My thoughts are to set it up on RIAForge as an open source tool. What do you think?

Also, if you know of a CF tool already out there that does this, I’d love to hear from you.

Problem

Write a tool that allows you to email all users. No one should get more than one email even if they are on the list more than twice.

The Catch

The twist to this problem is that the table of users is set up with a primary and a secondary email field and the same email can appear in multiple records in either the primary or secondary field.

Example Table

In the above example, We have Tim twice in Email1 and once in Email2. If we did a SQL Group by we would still have Tim twice. Once in Email1 and Once in Email2. It wouldn’t take long before Tim is calling asking us to fix this annoying problem of getting two emails.

The Solution

ColdFusion Query of Query and the good ol’ UNION feature in SQL!

<cfquery name="qryUsers" datasource="#request.dsn#">
	Select Email1 as Email
	From Users
	Group by Email1

	UNION

	SELECT Email2 AS Email
	FROM Users
	Group by Email2
</cfquery>
<cfquery name="qryEmails" dbtype="query">
	Select Email
	From qryUsers
	Group by Email
</cfquery>

The above example does two queries. The first one qryUsers uses UNION to combine two queries of the same table both retrieving email fields. With UNION you need to make sure that you name the fields the same from both queries and that they are both of the same data type. The second query qryEmails is a simple ColdFusion Query of Query which then takes the resulting recordset and groups once again to get rid of the second instance of Tim. This can also work with two different tables in the event you have a user table and maybe a Admin table but you want to send one email to everyone.

Now, isn’t programming fun?

There are other ways to solve this common problem. I’d love to hear yours!