Note: This blog post is from 2015. Some content may be outdated--though not necessarily.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.

Just wanted to share word (sorry it took so long) that I'd been selected as a speaker at the upcoming dev.Objective() conference, in Minneapolis in Mid-May. Hope to see lots of my fellow CFers there, and of course new folks who were not CFers.

While the conference name has changed (from cf.Objective()), there are still plenty of CF-oriented topics, and of course as nearly everyone would point out, it's good for everyone to expand their reach and focus.

To that end, I'll be doing a topic a bit different than my normal focus of CF server troubleshooting. Instead, recognizing that there will be folks there who either use other servers, or develop web apps or mobile apps, I'll do a bit of a "soft" topic on how to troubleshoot performance problems more generically, in:

Hey, my web app's slow. Where's the problem?

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Note: This blog post is from 2014. Some content may be outdated--though not necessarily.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.

If you haven't heard the news yet, the CFHour podcast has had it's last show, it seems. Dave (Ferguson) and Scott (Stroz) announced the news at the end of their last episode (#213), quietly and without fanfare (or any advanced indications), citing time challenges, etc.

I'm holding a glimmer of hope that it's all an April Fool's prank, but if true it's indeed the end of an era and time to pause and reflect as if on the passing of a friend.

Update: I'm vindicated! :-) The guys announced in their next show that it WAS INDEED an April Fool's prank. Even so, I'll leave this entry, untouched, for posterity. Plus, most of the info is just as valuable to have shared, with them and with readers, whether they did or did not end the show. And like I said below, this gave them a chance like Twain and Nobel to see what folks thought when they thought they were dead. :-)

I also want to give some solace to fans of the show (and the general CFML community) with respect to where they may want to turn now to keep up on news, resources, etc. Fortunately, there are some places being actively updated. (And while surely some will see this as one more nail in CF's coffin, I don't and I'll address that briefly too.)

But first let's give credit where it's due about the podcast...

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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.

As the year comes to a close, many bloggers take a moment to document the most-viewed entries of the year on their blog. In that spirit, here are the top-viewed entries of the year for my blog.

I have more to say about the list (and such lists) below, but for those who like to "get to the point", here's the list:

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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.

The boys at the CFHour podcast, Dave, Scott, and Matt, are running a relief effort for victims of Hurricane Sandy.

If you'll make a donation of any amount to any relief effort devoted to victims of Sandy (like the popular Red Cross texting program), and then let the CFHour guys know about it, you'll be put in a draw to win a copy of CFBuilder 2.

To enter the draw, either or email them at show(at)cfhour(dot)com (the latter was added after the episode, in a reply to a comment on Adam Cameron's blog, where he too is kindly promoting the effort.

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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.

Often we hear some assert that CF's dying, whether they mean CF the product or CFML the language. I want to make one contention against that which I don't hear too often at all:

There are an awful lot of currently active conferences covering CF/CFML for such a "dying" product and/or language.

I count 12 annual conferences (for the current year) which cover the topics (CF or CFML) entirely or as a major track, as listed in the category on CFML conferences which I keep updated in my CF411 resource.

Here first are the next several coming up:

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Note: This blog post is from 2011. 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.

Just wanted to take a moment to recognize a bit of a milestone for the online ColdFusion Meetup.

This week will mark our 175th episode, with Jim Harris presenting on "Security: Hiding Info. from Individuals Not Authorized To See It", being held Thursday at noon US ET. (And the 176th episode will follow just after that "Requirements and Estimating", with Peter Bell.

If you've missed out on any of the past sessions, they're recorded and posted at recordings.coldfusionmeetup.com, and since 2010 are available in either streaming or downloadable (flv, mp3, mp4, wmv) format.

If you want to know about future meetings, you can join the 2400+ other members of the group (for free at the first URL above) to get email notifications, or you can follow the RSS feed of the calendar there, or if you can't get to meetup.com (being a social networking site), you can also just follow us via @cfmeetup on twitter.

Here's to 175 more episodes in coming years. :-)

PS If anyone is wondering, I count the sessions since I began hosting the CFMeetup in April 2007. Steven Erat had organized it originally and run it in 2005-2006. I simply started counting the recordings as I posted them and didn't think at the time to go back and find/count any previous sessions, so technically the number could/should be larger, but we'll leave that as a historical aberration. :-)

Note: This blog post is from 2010. 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.

Did you know CF's being used by Dell, TomTom, BestBuy and others? Well, it is, but through a service they license, but for public-facing parts of their sites, so it's indeed worth noting.

I had noticed today that Budd Wright from PelcoSolutions (aka DVS Interactive) blogged this weekend that "BestBuy Uses ColdFusion". That certainly caught my eye (heck, I was in the store just yesterday.)

Just the BestBuy "trade-in" site, but more than meets the eye

As I read it and saw it was about their trade-in site, I thought, "well, some may bemoan that it's 'just a subsite'", and therefore may not find it quite as compelling as if it were the main site. That may be so.

But on closer examination I found something that is indeed still more compelling. What BestBuy is using (that uses CF) is really a licensed service from dealtree.com. And if one looks at that page (where DealTree lists others using their service), we see that indeed it's used also by Dell, TomTom, Sharp, Buy.com, Gateway, Casio, Ebay, and others. So this is about more than just BestBuy! :-)

These other companies (Dell, TomTom, etc.) would have high expectations

They all certainly wouldn't have chosen if if it wasn't suitable to the task, and you'd think someone higher up in each company had to clear it, since trade-in processing is pretty public-facing (both in-store and online).

Perhaps we can hope it may raise the profile of CF within the companies (though really, it's probably just seen as a utility to most, SAAS that just works, so that may be too much to hope for.)

Still, since these are companies which will require fast response in both the in-store and online sites, it's certainly a nice set of examples of e-commerce CF use that we can point to, so thanks for sharing, Budd.

I figured this was all a little much to put in his blog as a comment. :-) Plus I thought that my blogging it separately might be a nice way to give his entry a little more "link juice" in the search engines. :-)

Who else is using CF?

I'm adding this after a couple of comments below, of people noting other sites using CF. I didn't think to mention it when I wrote this but I do keep a list of resources helping people who may wonder what other sites run CF. It's one of the 125+ categories in my CF411 site:

CFML-Powered Web Sites (who's using CFML?)

To be clear, I'm not keeping a list. Instead, I point there to many sites that do keep such lists.

Note: This blog post is from 2010. 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.

This could be very interesting. Starting today at 4pm EST, and over the next few weeks, the "Mura Show" (a weekly online user group for Mura CMS) will dedicate a few episodes to focus on the conversion of my site, CArehart.org.

In this post, let me introduce the plan.

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Note: This blog post is from 2009. 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.

If you haven't heard, tomorrow (Wed, April 15) is the all-day CFUnited Express Atlanta event, a sort of mini-preview of the multi-day conference in DC in August. It's a great deal, really, not only for the great day full of CF and Flex/AIR content, but for other valuable benefits.

First, the speaker lineup starts with the ColdFusion Jedi himself, Ray Camden. Beyond that, several past Atlanta CFUG (and CFUnited) speakers will be presenting (on topics not presented at the ACFUG before): Doug Knudsen, John Mason, Andy Powell, and myself (Charlie Arehart). You can see their topic titles and descriptions here: http://express.cfunited.com/go/atlanta/2009/schedule

Second, there will also be giveaways including a free copy of Flex, ColdFusion, a free ticket to CFUnited, and more.

All this for just $149 (use code CFXEB2 to get this early bird price, even at the door). Pre-registration if preferred, of course, to help them plan for the included coffee/donuts, lunch/sodas, and snacks/beverages, but you can get in at the door at that price with that code. Register or get more info at http://express.cfunited.com/go/atlanta/2009.

Third, note that 100% of your Express event payment can be applied towards your attendance at CFUnited 2009. Between the content, the giveaways (at great odds in the smaller venue than the full conference), and the credit toward the full conference, it's really a great deal.

For still other reasons to attend, see the "top 10 reasons" at http://express.cfunited.com/. If you have any last minute questions not answered on the resources above, you can also call the organizer, Liz Frederick, at 410-963-9418.

Finally, for more about the venue, Roundbox Global (across the street from the Kind Plow Arts Center), including parking information, see this blog entry.

Hope to see you there.

PS If you know anyone in the New York City area, there will be an event there also, next week, April 20. More here.

Note: This blog post is from 2008. 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.

If you're a speaker, user group manager, or blogger who offers URLs for previously recorded Breeze/Connect presentations, you may find that some now break because they point to a domain that Adobe no longer supports, breezecentral.com. Someone noted that an old entry that had been entered previously in my UGTV repository now broke. I looked into it, found the answer, and am sharing it here for others.

It's understandable, since Breeze was renamed to Connect a long time ago, but the bummer is that so many folks have for so long pointed to such recordings, and now they will all break. I've changed all the UGTV entries.

Here is a table of the old URLS and new ones that I've found to work for each. It's not always quite as obvious as it may seem:

Old URL	New URL
These need adobe.acrobat.com
adobechats.adobe.breezecentral.com	adobechats.adobe.acrobat.com
adobechats.breezecentral.com	adobechats.adobe.acrobat.com
mmchats.breezecentral.com	mmchats.adobe.acrobat.com
mmusergroup.breezecentral.com	mmusergroup.adobe.acrobat.com
seminars.breezecentral.com	seminars.adobe.acrobat.com
These just need acrobat.com
experts.breezecentral.com	experts.acrobat.com
stevenerat.breezecentral.com	stevenerat.acrobat.com
mmse.breezecentral.com	mmse.acrobat.com

Of course, I'm sure there are many other URLS out there using breezecentral.com. I'm only listing those that were in my UGTV database, that I tested and changed.

So for example, Doug Smith had noted that this entry from a 2006 talk by Sean Corfield, on "Objects and Persistence" failed (with domain not found):

http://adobechats.adobe.breezecentral.com/p31075720/

The correct new URL is:

http://adobechats.adobe.acrobat.com/p31075720/

So I've taken care of the UGTV entries. If you have your own listing of such URLs, I hope you'll take note of all this and make the changes for yourself and your readers.