2016 in review: top 10 CArehart ColdFusion posts of the year

OK, I said "top 10" in the title but I list 14 below. I titled this my "favorite" posts originally (which was factual), then I modified it to "14 favorite" (to better convey in a tweet that it was indeed a list), but both seemed clunky. "Top 10" just has a nice ring. And while most are related to CF (thus the mention in the title), some will benefit those using another CFML engine or none at all.

And they're not ranked by visits or anything (or date), just in the order I think they may help the most people, within each category below. I left out ones announcing upcoming conferences that have since passed, or any other time-limited posts. This leaves just those that I hope may be helpful for readers in this next year and and perhaps years to come. (I have some posts from several years ago and older that till get visits and comments.)

Blogs may well be waning in general popularity (in terms of people following them regularly), but they're just as useful as ever for information to be shared, and as important, to be found via folks searching for help well into the future. They even help us, the blog entry writers, to remember something ourselves! :-)

I wish I had thought to create this annual summary each year. (My blog of course lets you view posts by year or month, and by category. But a list like this just seems useful.) Maybe at some point I'll go back and gather up previous years' entries in new posts.

I have broken this past year's entries into two categories:

Troubleshooting (Mostly CF)

• How to solve common problems with applying ColdFusion updates (in 10 and above)
• The ColdFusion 'metrics log', an oft-missed or misunderstood feature, 'new' since CF10 (Part 1)
• Why you should think twice about leaving on the "public JRE" option of the Java JDK installer
• Stuck running the ColdFusion 'Migration wizard'? Here's how to get past that
• Tending the SQL Server garden: tuning and maintenance resources (updated and useful)
• Great set of substantial, practical, but brief videos on IIS

Introducing CF2016

• Released today: CF2016, or 'ColdFusion (2016 release)'. What's new, and more
• ColdFusion 2016: What's new that's in CF Enterprise only?
• ColdFusion 2016: Changes in the CF Administrator
• Pricing for ColdFusion 2016, including upgrading from CF 10 or 11
• CF2016: What's deprecated and/or 'no longer supported' (note: nothing 'removed')
• Version numbers of libraries underlying ColdFusion 2016
• Hurray! ColdFusion 2016 no longer uses Akamai Download Manager
• New whitepapers from Adobe on ColdFusion 2016: lockdown, migration, and performance

Here's to more in 2017!