I'll be speaking at CFCamp in Munich, Germany, Oct 20-21. See you there!
I'm delighted to announce that I'll be presenting again this year at CFCamp, in Munich, Oct 20-21.
[Looking for Charlie's main web site?]
Why you should think twice about leaving on the "public JRE" option of the Java JDK installer
This is a follow-up to a post I did in late 2014, CF911: 'Help! I've updated the JVM which ColdFusion uses, and now it won't start!'. In that post, I listed about a dozen common problems that befall people who try to update the JVM that CF is using (and it and this post apply as well to Lucee or BlueDragon, or indeed any Java application server).
In this post, I want to elaborate on one more common mistake. Well, mistake may be too strong word. It's about a default option when you run a Java JDK installer (see the other post for more on JDK vs JRE options).
In short, I make the case here for why you should NOT let the JDK installer implement its "public jre" option.
How to solve common problems with applying ColdFusion updates (in 10 and above)
While ColdFusion 10 and later releases add a new automated update installation mechanism, what do you do if the update doesn't work? The answer may be simple on the surface, but not obvious to most. (And you'll likely be in panic mode.)
Many find after applying a ColdFusion update that either CF won't start at all, or they can't access the ColdFusion Admin, or some part of CF or their app doesn't work. The problem may be simply that there was an error in the update process CF did, and it may be rather easily confirmed and resolved.
In this post, I share several tips and observations to help resolve this, based on my years of providing remote CF troubleshooting support.
The TLDR version: check the ColdFusion update log (not logs in the normal CF "logs" folder. More detail below.) And if there are errors, try stopping CF yourself and then either try the update again, or if it still fails, try to manually apply the update from the command line. If that's enough to get you going, great--especially if you ARE in panic mode! (If the "problem" you need to solve, instead, is that you can't get CF to show you updates because you're behind a firewall preventing outbound internet access, I help with that also, toward the end.)
For most people, though, even those "simple things to do" can prove challenging (and understandably so). And you may find different resources on the web offering perhaps truncated discussions of the topics, which is why I elaborate on things in this post.
And even if you're in a panic, it may take only about 10 minutes to read this whole post. (You can also hire me to help instead, of course. See the link above.) Hope the info to follow is helpful for you.
I'll be speaking at the Adobe ColdFusion Summit in Vegas, Oct 10-11. See you there!
Many have been asking if I'd be speaking again at this year's Adobe ColdFusion Summit, in Last Vegas (Oct 10-11). I will indeed!
(There was some challenge in getting all the speakers posted until just last week, so though I had known I was speaking for months, I held off announcing it until I could point to the link.)
I'll be presenting (as I do for each release) my "Hidden Gems In ColdFusion 2016" See the description via the links above. It should be as classically useful as ever, whether for those either new to or experienced with CF 2016.
I certainly do appreciate the conference team selecting me again to be a speaker. I've spoken at each of the 3 so far, the first in 2013.
The conference is always a great time (and has gotten larger and better each year, by most accounts). And Vegas is of course a great location (though honestly I barely leave the venue the whole time). Then there are all the great attendees, and sponsor booths, as well as nearly the entire CF team on hand, and of course lots of useful information shared from all the presenters.
If you'll be attending, I hope to see you there! And if you're still considering it, see the Why attend? page and other links offered there. Finally, note that the "early bird" price has been extended to August 31. See the Pricing page.
I'll be speaking at dev.Objective() conference, June 15-17. See you there!
I'll be speaking at next week's dev.Objective() Conference, in Minneapolis (June 15-17). The conference is always a great time, in a great location, with great people, and lots of useful information shared, and I appreciate the conference team selecting me again to be a speaker. If you'll be attending, I hope to see you.
New whitepapers from Adobe on ColdFusion 2016: lockdown, migration, and performance
Continuing my series of posts on new things in CF2016 which some may miss,there are some new resources from Adobe about CF 2016, posted in recent days. (I suppose we may see a post from Adobe on their blog at some point, but I wanted to share it in the meantime.)
You can find them listed as "whitepapers" at the bottom of ColdFusion.com (as I view it today, at least), so keep an eye there to see if perhaps any others may ever be added.
Here are the docs, with some observations also about their size and version, if available:
The ColdFusion 'metrics log', an oft-missed or misunderstood feature, 'new' since CF10 (Part 1)
I'd like to take a diversion from my recent posts focused on CF2016 and talk about something that applies (and should interest) anyone using CF 10, 11, or 2016.
Have you heard of the new "metrics log" option that was enabled in CF10? If you have not, it's worth knowing about (there's precious little documentation, and I'll point to it, and give you still more info to help you use it). It's a useful, low-impact mechanism to get some high-level metrics logged by CF every 60 seconds (by default), and stored along with other CF logs.
If you did know about it, you've probably had some problems with it. Why does it show "nulls"? What do reported metrics really mean? Why do they not jive with what I'd expect to be the numbers reported?
In this post, and a Part 2 to come, I will introduce the metrics log, pointing out some key things you need to know to have it setup to work at all, and then I'll share my observations of things I've come to understand about the reported metrics.
ColdFusion 2016: What's new that's in CF Enterprise only?
Continuing my series of posts I started last week on CF2016, here's a quick post on what's new in CF 2016 that is in the Enterprise edition only (not Standard).
Fortunately, the list is pretty short:
Pricing for ColdFusion 2016, including upgrading from CF 10 or 11
Continuing my series of posts on CF2016 which I started last week, I wanted to pull together a post on its pricing. Here I show both the base price (for someone purchasing from the US, in Feb 2016), for CF Standard and Enterprise, as well as the upgrade price from CF10 and 11. I also answer a few common questions (where I could find the answer), and I end by pointing to a currently available discount price for CF.
ColdFusion 2016: Changes in the CF Administrator
As folks continue to explore ColdFusion (2016 Release), aka CF2016, regarding what's new or changed, I thought I'd put together a listing of what has changed in the CF Admin specifically. This is another in a series of posts I started last week on CF2016.
