Some hidden gems in ColdFusion Builder 2.0.1 for those who edit via FTP
Note: This blog post is from 2012. Some content may be outdated--though not necessarily.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.Let me say this up front: I realize that some folks may well decry my pointing this out (hold that thought). But in the spirit of my tradition of pointing out "hidden gems" in things related to CF and CFBuilder, those who may edit files via FTP will want to know that there are some enhancements for that support in CF Builder 2.0.1, now in public beta.
Among the "other enhancements" mentioned at the bottom of the "New Features Notes" (PDF), note a few related to FTP:
- New Upload On Save option on the FTP connector dialog box to upload a file by way of FTP when saved locally
- Use shortcuts to perform Synchronize and Upload (Ctrl+Alt+W U)/Download (Ctrl+Alt+W D) simultaneously
- Take advantage of the shortcut for Synchronize (Ctrl+Alt+W Y)
Those may be big news for some, which might be easily missed, and which are not likely to be pointed out in most posts on what's new in CFB 2.0.1. And some would even intentionally leave them out, so I'm "takin' one for the community" here by pointing these out. :-)
Why some may decry these features
Also consider that not everyone will be publishing to a live server either, many use it for publishing to a dev or staging server first, which is a perfectly valid and acceptable use for uploading on save.
I know many folks who do not have a local dev server at all, they develop on a remote server, my cfmldeveloper.com users would be one prime example of this as they are developing on the cfmldeveloper servers and do not have cf installed locally, so upload on save would definitely be a useful feature for them.
And sure, if they are FTPing instead to a dev/test server one may argue it's less problematic. I'll tweak the entry to make that point, crediting you.
That said, I'm not sure if your concluding point (about your users on cfmldeveloper.com) is making the same point, or in fact what I was suggesting some would warn against. If you mean that that server is for development/staging, then fair enough.
But if you mean you have production sites there, and developers who simply edit code live there, then you are in fact talking about the very thing some would warn against. Again, though, I did clarify that I understand some will, for whatever reason. Is that what you're saying? I want to clarify since you brought up the point.
So this is a prime example of a situation where a developer would want to upload on save without is being a bad practice.
The reason being that if you are developing on a remote server then you need to upload your code there before it will execute. If you are not running ColdFusion locally or indeed a web server then you would not be able to run the code locally.
A lot of companies work in this way also where they have central dev/staging servers.
So the ability to upload on save would save the extra step of having to switch over to an FTP client to do this task. It is certainly a feature I find handy in dreamweaver.
But you answered my question to you, which was, is cfmldeveloper used to host production sites. Sounds like you're saying no. Fair enough. I was just seeking context for others.
That said, you also don't need to remind me that it's been on the CF411.com site. I knew that. What I didn't know was that it was intended only for development and testing. The first line of the page says "CFMLDeveloper.com provides web space for developers to learn, develop and host CFML". That last point made me think it was about production hosting as well.
Now you may answer, "well yes, if people want to host a production site I won't stop them. I do warn them that I enable all these development-oriented features, but if they want to host a prod site I won't stop them". In that case, then you didn't really answer the question I'd asked. :-)
But look, let's leave it alone. The main points have been made. Any further clarification on that point won't really be germane to the blog's main topic. And anyway, you've gotten some extra PR here for the site. :-) Note that I never complained about that. I appreciated that you were trying to make a reasonable point. I updated the entry to reflect that. Let's please let it go at that.