Adobe CS tutorials - Dreamweaver, FIreworks, Photoshop, Flash and Coldfusion

ColdFusion

Creating a Bar Graph with HTML and CSS using ColdFusion - Part 2
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Graphs in web pages and reporting applications can be put together with built-in ColdFusion functionality using the tag, or with JavaScript libraries that are widely available. However, sometimes you have a need for a simple bar graph that does not depend on this more advanced technology; working with ColdFusion servers that do not have functioning on the server, or targeting browsers that are not JavaScript enabled.

Bar graphs can be created quite easily using ancient HTML technology without the aid of more advanced techniques for simple bar graphs that display quickly and across all browsers. For this tutorial, I'll assume you know basic ColdFusion and SQL -- writing queries, views, and getting the results you want.

A bar graph can be built vertically or horizontally. The first part showed the horizontal graph. This part will show the vertical graphing process. The basic process is to create the SQL query that you want to view the result as a graph, use a slim image that can be stretched as a basis of the bar graph, and set the height of the image based on the value of your data. For example, a value of $50 might translate to 50 pixels high, and $500 might translate to 500 pixels high. Using simple formulas, we'll create the graphs.

The Creating a Bar Graph with HTML and CSS Series:
Creating a Bar Graph with HTML and CSS using PHP - Part 1
Creating a Bar Graph with HTML and CSS using ColdFusion - Part 1
Creating a Bar Graph with HTML and CSS using PHP - Part 2
Creating a Bar Graph with HTML and CSS using ColdFusion - Part 2

Creating a Bar Graph with HTML and CSS using ColdFusion Part 1
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Graphs in web pages and reporting applications can be put together with built-in ColdFusion functionality using the tag, or with JavaScript libraries that are widely available. However, sometimes you have a need for a simple bar graph that does not depend on this more advanced technology; working with ColdFusion servers that do not have functioning on the server, or targeting browsers that are not JavaScript enabled. Bar graphs can be created quite easily using ancient HTML technology without the aid of more advanced techniques for simple bar graphs that display quickly and across all browsers. For this tutorial, I'll assume you know basic ColdFusion -- writing queries and getting the results you want.

A bar graph can be built vertically or horizontally. I'll show a simple horizontal graph. The basic process is to create the SQL query that you want to view the result as a graph, use a slim image that can be stretched as a basis of the bar graph, and set the width of the image based on the value of your data. For example, a value of $50 might translate to 50 pixels wide, and $500 might translate to 500 pixels wide. Using simple formulas, we'll create the graphs.

The Creating a Bar Graph with HTML and CSS Series:
Creating a Bar Graph with HTML and CSS using PHP - Part 1
Creating a Bar Graph with HTML and CSS using ColdFusion - Part 1
Creating a Bar Graph with HTML and CSS using PHP - Part 2
Creating a Bar Graph with HTML and CSS using ColdFusion - Part 2

Cartweaver Admin Hints and Mods - Part 10: Creating a Taxes Collected Report Using ColdFusion
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Cartweaver Admin Hints and Mods - Part 8: Creating an Order Report for Products Using ColdFusion
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ColdFusion Worst Practices - Part 1: Misusing CFOUTPUT Free!

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In this series, we will try to highlight some worst practices in the use of ColdFusion syntax, features and options. These are not necessarily the kinds of things that will stop your site from working, but they are things that create bottlenecks, expose security weaknesses, or make your code difficult to read and maintain. In today's installment, we will look at the misuse of the CFOUTPUT tag.

The ColdFusion Worst Practices Series:
ColdFusion Worst Practices - Part 1: Misuing CFOUTPUT
ColdFusion Worst Practices - Part 2: Abusing Pound Signs (#)

Creating a Form Confirmation Page in ColdFusion
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A confirmation page is the last page you reach before submitting a form -- you fill in the fields, click submit, review your information, and then submit one final time. Confirmation pages can be built in different ways. I'll show one method using ColdFusion that utilizes hidden form fields to post to your final action page. I'll leave the bells and whistles to the reader (validation, css, etc) and show the meat of the technique that is being used.

Cartweaver Admin Hints and Mods - Part 5: Adding Customer Search Parameters for ColdFusion
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Cartweaver Admin Hints and Mods - Part 3: Creating an Order Report Graph for ColdFusion
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Cartweaver Admin Hints and Mods - Part 2: Creating a Low Stock Warning for ColdFusion
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Cartweaver Admin Hints and Mods Part 1: Creating a Low Stock Warning for PHP Free!

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Quickshot - Missing Images in CFDocument Free!

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ColdFusion's tag makes creating dynamic PDF images on the fly a breeze. There have been problems, though, including images in those documents. Many times, for various reasons, you can end up with a perfectly valid image reference in the HTML portion of your document that becomes a red X when the HTML is PDF'd.

ColdFusion 8 and AJAX Series - Part 4: CFWindow
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Continuing on our ColdFusion 8 and AJAX series we will take a look at CFWindow. So what are windows and why would I use them? Unlike pop-up windows you would create with the target attribute or javascript that can be blocked or not function at all depending on the user or there browser settings. CFWindow is a simple DHTML window for displaying information. Follow along as we explore the tag.

The ColdFusion 8 and AJAX Series:
ColdFusion 8 and AJAX Series - Part 1a: Layouts
ColdFusion 8 and AJAX Series - Part 1b: Layouts
ColdFusion 8 and AJAX Series - Part 2: Tabbed Layouts
ColdFusion 8 and AJAX Series - Part 3: Pods
ColdFusion 8 and AJAX Series - Part 4: CFWindow

Setting Up a Scheduled Task in ColdFusion
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ColdFusion has a mechanism in the ColdFusion admin to set up a scheduled task. These scheduled tasks are ColdFusion pages that you want to run on a schedule -- daily, weekly, hourly, every Monday at 1pm, or on any other schedule of your choosing. The task can be any ColdFusion page. This article will show how to set up a scheduled task through the ColdFusion administrator.

Adding a JDBC Driver to ColdFusion
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ColdFusion ships with JDBC drivers for most of the major databases, however, all JDBC drivers are not created equal. There are good ones and bad ones, and some of the newer drivers will improve performance and stability. In addition, some of the drivers that ship with various versions of ColdFusion have known problems (MySQL comes to mind). Also, there are databases that are not listed in the standard ColdFusion install that you may want to connect to. This article will show the simple process for adding a new driver to the ColdFusion server.

Comparing Timestamps in ColdFusion Free!

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In a couple of previous articles, we looked at comparing timestamps in SQL Server and MYSQL, with an eye for capturing data that matches a supplied date even if the times are different. Lest we think there is only one way to do things, we got some comments regarding the ability to do this in the server side language (such as ColdFusion) as well.

Setting and Deleting Cookies in ColdFusion Free!

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Cookies are little bits of text information that you can store on your visitor’s computer to keep track of all kinds of things related to your site. Common uses are to track the last time a person was at the site or to store login information, at the user’s request, to allow them to be automatically logged in the next time the visit. In this article we will look at setting and deleting cookies in ColdFusion. In the next article we will use those cookies to automatically login a user when they ask the site to remember them.

Modifying Classic ColdFusion Debugging: Part 2
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If you have your own ColdFusion development box, you probably have ColdFusion debugging turned on. I have always used the Classic debugging mode as opposed to Dockable, because I find the popup window takes too long and is too cumbersome to use. However, classic debugging has a few shortfalls. I addressed some with my article on Better Debugging Info for ColdFusion, however that article discussed a completely custom debugging file. Part 1 of this article discussed how to tweak the file used internally by ColdFusion to display debugging results. In that article we expanded arrays and structures for a better debug output. In this article, we'll add some useful query debugging information.

The Modifying Classic ColdFusion Debugging Series:
Modifying Classic ColdFusion Debugging: Part 1
Modifying Classic ColdFusion Debugging: Part 2

Quickshot - Detecting a Mobile Device in ColdFusion Free!

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With the increase of smart phones, PDAs and other handheld devices that can display web content, more and more sites are looking to include Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) and Wireless Markup Language (WML) content on their websites. Even if you do not try to replicate your content, often important pieces of your site can be delivered in a format that is easily readable and usable by the smaller screen of a mobile phone or other device.

The Mystery of CFC Variables and Properties - Part 2
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If you use ColdFusion you should be using ColdFusion Components (CFCs). One of the more perplexing parts of developing CFCs for the beginning ColdFusion developer is how to define variables and properties. The proper use of variables is important for memory consumption and data integrity. You don't want variables hanging around that aren't needed or accessed from areas that they should not be accessed from.

The first part of this series explained some of the differences between local and global variables as they apply to CFCs. This second part of the series will continue the discusion and show a simple CFC framework component. Part 3 will show a CFC that extends our base component.

The Mystery of CFC Variables and Properties Series:
The Mystery of CFC Variables and Properties - Part 1
The Mystery of CFC Variables and Properties - Part 2
The Mystery of CFC Variables and Properties - Part 3
The Mystery of CFC Variables and Properties - Part 4

The Mystery of CFC Variables and Properties - Part 1 Free!

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If you use ColdFusion you should be using ColdFusion Components (CFCs). One of the more perplexing parts of developing CFCs for the beginning ColdFusion developer is how to define variables and properties. This article will attempt to explain some of the differences between local and global variables as they apply to CFCs. The proper use of variables is important for memory consumption and data integrity. You don't want variables hanging around that aren't needed, or accessed from areas that they should not be accessed from.

The second part of the series will continue the discusion and show a simple CFC framework.

The Mystery of CFC Variables and Properties Series:
The Mystery of CFC Variables and Properties - Part 1
The Mystery of CFC Variables and Properties - Part 2
The Mystery of CFC Variables and Properties - Part 3
The Mystery of CFC Variables and Properties - Part 4

ColdFusion and Exchange Server - Part 3: Updating and Deleting Calendar Events
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Once you have learned to create an appointment in Exchange Server, deleting it is a relatively simple operation. The key to deleting a calendar event is knowing the unique ID that Exchange assigned when you created the event. If you stored the ID returned by the Exchange connection in your database, you just need to retrieve it and use it to send a delete command to the server.

The ColdFusion and Exchange Server Series:
ColdFusion and Exchange Server - Part 1
ColdFusion and Exchange Server - Part 2: Creating Calendar Events
ColdFusion and Exchange Server - Part 3: Updating and Deleting Calendar Events

ColdFusion and Exchange Server - Part 2: Creating Calendar Events
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In a previous article, we covered making a connection to Exchange Server from ColdFusion 8 and retrieving some email information. In this installment, we will use a form to collect information about an appointment, send it to Exchange as a calendar item and stick it in a database for use within an application. Later we will retrieve appointment information, edit it and delete it.

The ColdFusion and Exchange Server Series:
ColdFusion and Exchange Server - Part 1
ColdFusion and Exchange Server - Part 2: Creating Calendar Events
ColdFusion and Exchange Server - Part 3: Updating and Deleting Calendar Events

Convert a Querystring into a Struct Using ColdFusion
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ColdFusion makes it easy to work with structures like URL variables, form variables, and other types of structures. Why would you want to convert a query string into a struct when the URL struct already contains the URL variable in struct form? Frequently you are presented with a URL string as opposed to a struct containing the URL or form variables. This is where ColdFusion's built-in list functions come to the rescue. With the list function and a loop, it's easy to convert a string into a structure containing members, and even convert the string back into a URL or form struct.

Quickshot - Make Sure They Belong on Your Site Free!

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URL Tampering is one of the most common ways that people will try to mess with your site. They may try to change a URL String parameter to try and see or change or delete a record that they should not be able to access (which is something you should be trapping for anyway) or they may try to post a form into your site from an external server, allowing them to set whatever they want for hidden form fields.

In this Quickshot tutorial I will show you a quick and simple way to prevent people from accessing content on your site that they shouldn't see.

Quickshot: How to Parse Submitted Form Fields in ColdFusion Free!

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Most of the time, when your site submits a form to the server, you constructed that form so you know what fields to expect on the back side. On occasion, though, you may not know exactly what fields to expect when a form is dynamically created or may only contain data for certain fields. In ColdFusion, you can use a couple of methods to determine what fields exist in a form that has been received and what the data is for those fields.

Using Multiple Application.cfc Files - Part 1
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In ColdFusion 7, the Application.cfc file became the application base structure of choice over the Application.cfm file. As you know, the Application.cfm file is the central file in a ColdFusion application that is run before every page in your site. Global functions and variables that are used by the application can be located in this file, or inside files that are included in Application.cfm. Now, with Application.cfc, we can fine-tune the application with application events: onRequestStart, onRequestEnd, onSessionStart, and others. This makes it extremely desirable to use the Application.cfc file over the older Application.cfm file.

Unfortunately, ColdFusion doesn't have the mechanism built into it to run multiple Application.cfc files, as was done with Application.cfm For example, in an administrative section you might have a separate Application.cfm file that includes the main application version of the Application.cfm file but also has additional functionality to protect the administrative directory. Fortunately, there is a way to do the same thing with Application.cfc using inheritance.

The Using Multiple Application.cfc Files Series:
Using Multiple Application.cfc Files - Part 1
Using Multiple Application.cfc Files - Part 2

Making Stored Procedures Efficient Free!

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As a web application gets larger and needs to handle more traffic, special attention is needed to make sure it is running as efficiently as possible. More often than not, that means taking a look at the way that your data is marshaled from the database. I am constantly amazed at how much effort can be placed in making sure that pages are only so heavy and take X seconds to load on the HTML side, when very little consideration is given to how the database is being accessed.

The two things to remember when dealing with the optimization of your database are minimizing network traffic, and the reuse of execution plans. Both of these are accomplished by the proper use of stored procedures. In this article, we will cover a few tips to help you get the most out of your stored procedures.

Quick Shot - Using ColdFusion List Functions to Manipulate Text Free!

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ColdFusion's List functions are some of the most useful things in the language. They allow you to do all kinds of neat things with strings of text that can be divided by some character, like a comma delimited string or flat file layout.

Quickshot: Logging Out an Inactive User Free!

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As worried as people seem to be about their online information being compromised, they don't usually seem to take even the simplest precautions to keep wandering eyes off of their monitors and the information they display. If your application contains sensitive information, you may need to help your users protect it.

ColdFusion and Exchange Server - Part 1
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I have used Thunderbird forever, it seems. We tried Microsoft Exchange Server and Outlook several years ago, But we could never get it to configure quite right with our firewall, and it was a pain to manage, and Outlook and Outlook Express were unreliable, to say the least. I was pretty happy with a simpler mail server and Thunderbird, until two things happened at just about the same time.

My company was expanding, and with that came a larger sales team. There had been requests for Outlook before, but the sales force presented the best argument for needing the features of Exchange server (which most people never realize is a requirement to get all of the fancier features of Outlook). They needed shared calendars and the ability to management meeting invitations, plus better access from multiple locations. Sure there are other products that will allow this, but it seemed like a good time to try Exchange again.

The ColdFusion and Exchange Server Series:
ColdFusion and Exchange Server - Part 1
ColdFusion and Exchange Server - Part 2: Creating Calendar Events
ColdFusion and Exchange Server - Part 3: Updating and Deleting Calendar Events

Using CFQUERY with Directories
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The CFQUERY tag is a versitile tag that is not only for database queries. You can run a CFQUERY query of queries on any valid query result. Results from CFFTP, CFPOP, and CFDIRECTORY, among other tags, are returned as query results. This makes it very easy to do filtering and searching on query results from these different tags. This article will show one use of of the query of queries on a local server directory.

Modifying Classic ColdFusion Debugging: Part 1
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If you have your own ColdFusion development box, you probably have ColdFusion debugging turned on. I have always used the Classic debugging mode because I find the popup window debugging mode takes too long and is too cumbersome to use. However, classic debugging has a few shortfalls. I addressed some with my article on Better Debugging for ColdFusion, however that article discussed a completely custom debugging file. The method discussed in this article will show you how to tweak the file used internally by ColdFusion to display debugging results.

The Modifying Classic ColdFusion Debugging Series:
Modifying Classic ColdFusion Debugging: Part 1
Modifying Classic ColdFusion Debugging: Part 2

SQL Group vs. CFOUTPUT GROUP
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There is a lot of confusion among some ColdFusion developers about the use of GROUP in a SQL statement and the use of the group attribute in a tag. This article will try to explain the differences and where you would use one or the other.

Blocking Bad Words in ColdFusion
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One of the biggest problems on the Internet these days is spam in the form of comment spam and contact form spam. Blogs are big these days, and many have implemented spam trapping features, however spammers are not all automated robots -- some of the most insidious are real people sitting behind their computer attacking you with their Viagra ads and other assorted garbage. Guestbooks attract spammers like flies. And even contact forms, meant only to go to the site owner, are under attack as well.

This article will show a simple administrative interface to maintain a "bad word" list, and a simple way to prevent the spam from reaching the intended recipient.

Tracking Most Recently Read Content
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Community MX has a feature that shows the most recent items you viewed. This is quite easy to do, but requires a few things to be in place. This article will show how we do this. The article will use ColdFusion, but the technique can be applied across the board to any server language, like PHP or ASP.NET. We'll assume for this article that you have a user login system and content management system already in place. We'll focus on the functionality to store the content id of the user reading the content.

Creating a Master/Detail Pageset on One Page Using AJAX
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Dreamweaver's Master/Detail page set is a handy set of behaviors to use for a drill-down functionality -- display a list of records, and click on a link in the list to view the full record. Using the behaviors, however, you typically create two pages. If you create one page with both, the page will refresh each time you click on a link.

In this tutorial, I'll show how to create one master/detail page that uses some very simple JavaScript to load the details section of the page dynamically using AJAX. This tutorial will apply to PHP, ColdFusion, and ASP, with the concepts applicable to the other available server models that Dreamweaver now supports.

Installing ColdFusion 8 on Mac OS X
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ColdFusion 8, the latest and greatest, is the first version to be released under Adobe's auspices, and that makes a difference -- installing CF on OS X is easier than ever.

Approximate download size: 952k

ColdFusion and WMI Free!

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Microsoft calls their implementation of the Web-Based Enterprise Management (WBEM) industry initiative Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI). We call it the richest source of information containing everything you'd want to know about your Windows systems.

This article introduces the idea of connecting to WMI using ColdFusion, providing the developer endless opportunity to produce administrative and reporting applications guaranteed to take you out of the world of maintenance and in to the world of innovation.

Brice Mason is a husband and father from Albany, New York. He is also an independent software developer and freelance writer who regularly lets his curiousity get the best of him. As a developer working for diverse industry sectors such as healthcare, technology, and non-profit, Brice has consistently turned to ColdFusion to quickly solve his greatest challenges. He values the incredible flexibility it offers to produce highly creative and innovative solutions. Brice maintains a personal web site at http://www.skipslate.com.

Installing ColdFusion 8 Report Builder Free!

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With the release of ColdFusion 8 comes a new version of the ColdFusion Report Builder which was introduced back with version 7. There have been some great enhancements to the free reporting tool by Adobe. In future articles we will look at some examples, but for now lets take a look at how easy it is to install on Microsoft Windows Vista.

Installing ColdFusion 8 on Vista with Apache Free!

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ColdFusion 8 is the latest and greatest version of ColdFusion and as soon as it hit the Adobe Labs I hurried out to download it and install it. I noticed that there are a few new items that get installed with ColdFusion 8, like .NET integration and LiveCycle Data Services Express edition. So those familiar with installing ColdFusion 7, there are some new settings.

If you have had the pleasure, or pain, of running Windows Vista then you may know that simply installing applications is not really that simple. I will be taking you through installing ColdFusion 8 on Vista with Apache 2 as my web server.

Creating a Table-less Horizontal Looper in ColdFusion
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Dreamweaver has a Repeat Region server behavior that loops through your data and allows you to display it in a vertical or horizontal manner. If you want to display the data in a grid pattern, however, it requires a little more effort. Typically, a Horizontal Looper extension or code is used to create a table and put your individual data sections in a table cell. In this tutorial I'll show how to do that using <div> tags and CSS without tables.

This is a version of an article I did for PHP—but for ColdFusion instead. For this tutorial I'll assume you know how to use your database tools to create and manage databases, and how to create connections for ColdFusion.

Using the Bell Character—Parsing Lists in ColdFusion
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What is the bell character, you might ask? In the old days of computing, before there was surround sound, you could "print" a character to the screen that made a "beep" sound. If you put a bell character (ASCII 7) in a string, it would beep to the screen. These days, the bell character is not used for much...if anything. As a ColdFusion programmer, you can make use of this not-often-used character for different situations. Some lists seem like they are unparseable using regular ColdFusion functions, and some strings might not even seem like lists. This article will show a couple ways to parse otherwise difficult lists.

Anti-Spam Measures for PHP and ColdFusion - Part 2
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Spam, spam, spam, spam. Spammers have taken over the Internet and made it a horrible place to maintain a web site. Spammers have gone beyond simply spamming your email account -- now they are spamming blogs and guestbooks, spamming trackbacks, and spamming signup forms. Even a child's home page with a guestbook for friends is not safe from links for cialis, porn, or web hosting. Obviously these spammers are getting some return from their criminal activity, because they keep doing it. Unfortunately, you can't reach through the computer screen and grab them by the throat to strangle the life out of them. All you can do is put in place some safeguards and try to minimize the attack. Part 2 in this series shows how you can record the IP address of the spammer and block access to your site to that computer in the future. Once again, I'll assume you have familiarity with PHP or ColdFusion basics (databases, inserting and displaying data) and HTML forms.

The Anti-Spam Measures for PHP and ColdFusion Series:
Anti-Spam Measures for PHP and ColdFusion - Part 1
Anti-Spam Measures for PHP and ColdFusion - Part 2

Getting ColdFusion MX 7.0.2 Running on Vista and IIS7 Free!

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This article takes you step-by-step through the process of installing ColdFusion MX 7.0.2 on a PC running the new Vista operating system and using Internet Information Services (IIS) 7.

There are points during the installation process that can and will give you trouble if you follow directions published prior to Vista's release. Therefore, special emphasis has been given to the information you'll need to get working with ColdFusion on Vista.

Who will benefit by reading this article?

ColdFusion programmers who develop and/or run CFM pages locally (including developing CFCs) on a Vista box and who use IIS7.

Anti-Spam Measures for PHP and ColdFusion - Part 1
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Spam, spam, spam, spam. Spammers have taken over the Internet and made it a horrible place to maintain a web site. Spammers have gone beyond simply spamming your email account -- now they are spamming blogs and guestbooks, spamming trackbacks, and spamming signup forms. Even a child's home page with a guestbook for friends is not safe from links for cialis, porn, or web hosting. Obviously these spammers are getting some return from their criminal activity, because they keep doing it. Unfortunately, you can't reach through the computer screen and grab them by the throat to strangle the life out of them. All you can do is put in place some safeguards and try to minimize the attack.

The Anti-Spam Measures for PHP and ColdFusion Series:
Anti-Spam Measures for PHP and ColdFusion - Part 1
Anti-Spam Measures for PHP and ColdFusion - Part 2

Shut Off Your Site -- ColdFusion Maintenance
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There is frequently a need for page maintenance or database maintenance, without turning off a server. If you are at a remote location, wouldn't it be nice to be able to shut down access to your pages without having to call someone or pull up a remote desktop? With a couple simple variables and the Application.cfc file (or Application.cfm), you can create the functionality to shut off access to your site and return a simple message to any user that happens across your site while the maintenance is underway.

Implementing a Record Locking System in ColdFusion 7 - Part 2
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Most databases have some sort of row-level locking of database records, however when building a web application you need more than that. Picture a scenario where a database will have multiple users and each user could potentially be working on the same record. This can happen in an e-commerce site, where different departments have access to a given order for fulfillment, or in an Intranet site where various employees have access to a given record.

In this article I will show you how to implement a record locking system that relies on the Application.cfc file that was introduced in CF 7. This second part builds upon the files set up in part 1 and creates the record locking system.

The Implementing a Record Locking System in ColdFusion 7 Series:
Implementing a Record Locking System in ColdFusion 7 - Part 1
Implementing a Record Locking System in ColdFusion 7 - Part 2

Implementing a Record Locking System in ColdFusion 7
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Most databases have some sort of row-level locking of database records, however when building a web application you need more than that. Picture a scenario where a database will have multiple users and each user could potentially be working on the same record. This can happen in an e-commerce site, where different departments have access to a given order for fulfillment, or in an Intranet site where various employees have access to a given record.

In this article I will show you how to implement a record locking system that relies on the Application.cfc file that was introduced in CF 7. Because of the extended setup to get to the locking portion, we'll run this tutorial in two parts. In this first part, we will set up the Application.cfc with a simple login system, and build the results, login, and update pages.

Using a CF Custom Tag for Multiple Tabs
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Tabs in a web page are an intuitive way for a user to navigate elements on a page. Using tabs, you can create pages of an article, multi-tab forms, multi-tab pages of links, or other types of pages where there is too much content to fit on one page. Using two ColdFusion custom tags -- one for the tab functionality and one for each individual tab -- you can create a simple way to add tabs to a ColdFusion page. The tab code shown in the article is simple, but can be used to expand on, or you can simply use the techniques shown with your own tab code.

Favourite Extensions - Part 2: Massimo's CF Insert Bar Plus Free!

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In this, the second look at extensions that can enhance your production time, we are going to look at Massimo Foti's CF Insert Bar Plus.

The extension enhances functionality that already exists within Dreamweaver by reducing cftry, cfoutput and cfdump to a single click.

The Favourite Extensions Series:
Favourite Extensions - Part 1: Tom Muck's Sniplets
Favourite Extensions - Part 2: Massimo's CF Insert Bar Plus
Favourite Extensions - Part 3: The TFM Progress Bar

Announcing My CF Photo Gallery Free!

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It is the holiday season, and you will problaby be taking a lot of pictures. Need a way to easily manage and display your photo galleries online? Read all about the new CMX application: My CF Photo Gallery. With the CF Photo Gallery and a ColdFusion server, you or a client can upload and manage image galleries right from a browser window.

My CF Photo Gallery
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My CF Photo Gallery is a ColdFusion image gallery application. It provides a logical step by step interface within a secure administration area enabling you to create new galleries and edit the content of existing galleries.

A Simple Multi-language ColdFusion Content Management System - Part 3
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There are various ways to create a data-driven multi-language site, but the method I have shown in this article series uses an underused technique involving ColdFusion custom tags. Basically, the technique will turn any simple, well-formed HTML or XHTML page into a content management system with only one tag required on the page.

The first part of this series showed the principles behind the custom tag technique. The second part implemented the database tables and custom ColdFusion functionality to turn HTML tags into database-driven dynamic tags. This third part will create a simple administrative interface to administer the system.

The Multi-Language ColdFusion Content Management System Series:
A Simple Multi-language ColdFusion Content Management System - Part 1
A Simple Multi-language ColdFusion Content Management System - Part 2
A Simple Multi-Language ColdFusion Content Management System - Part 3

A Simple Multi-language ColdFusion Content Management System - Part 2
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There are various ways to create a data-driven multi-language site, but the method I will show in this article series uses an underused technique involving ColdFusion custom tags.

Basically, the technique shown will turn any simple, well-formed HTML or XHTML page into a content management system with only one tag required on the page. This first part of this series showed the principles behind the custom tag technique.

This part will implement the database tables and custom ColdFusion functionality to turn HTML tags into database-driven dynamic tags to implement the multi-language aspect.

The Multi-Language ColdFusion Content Management System Series:
A Simple Multi-language ColdFusion Content Management System - Part 1
A Simple Multi-language ColdFusion Content Management System - Part 2
A Simple Multi-Language ColdFusion Content Management System - Part 3

A Simple Multi-language ColdFusion Content Management System - Part 1 Free!

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There are various ways to create a data-driven multi-language site, but the method I will show in this article series uses an underused technique involving ColdFusion custom tags. Basically, the technique shown will turn any simple, well-formed HTML or XHTML page into a content management system with only one tag required on the page.

This first part will show the principles behind the custom tag technique. The next part will show how to implement the multi-language aspect. The third part will create an administrative interface to administer the system.

The Multi-Language ColdFusion Content Management System Series:
A Simple Multi-language ColdFusion Content Management System - Part 1
A Simple Multi-language ColdFusion Content Management System - Part 2
A Simple Multi-Language ColdFusion Content Management System - Part 3

Creating Daily Stats Pages
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A stat page can be used for an e-store, blog, ad rotater, or any other type of application where you want to track a specific series of "things" that happen each day. For example, on a blog you might track blog hits. In an e-store, you might track daily sales. For an ad rotator you might track click-throughs.

This article will show how to write a query to group the daily activity in the first section, and how to display that as a graph using ColdFusion in the second section. The article will use SQL Server syntax, but could be adapted to any database. Also, the SQL code is applicable to any server model—not only ColdFusion. This is part 1 of 2.

Using the <cfsavecontent> Tag
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There are many ways to build a string in ColdFusion, but one often overlooked method involves using the <cfsavecontent> tag. This article will take a look at the standard ways that a ColdFusion developer might build a string, and compare it to using <cfsavecontent>.

Creating Simple Printed Reports in ColdFusion: Part 5
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In this installment of the series, we will look at ways that you can incorporate dynamic elements into your documents. While there is certainly a wide range of things that might fall into the category of "dynamic elements", for this article I mean one of two things:

The insertion of dynamic text (such as names and addresses) into the text of your document.
The inclusion or exclusion of entire sections of a document based on your user’s input.

The Creating Simple Printed Reports in ColdFusion Series:

Creating Simple Printed Reports in ColdFusion: Part 1

Creating Simple Printed Reports in ColdFusion: Part 2

Creating Simple Printed Reports in ColdFusion: Part 3

Creating Simple Printed Reports in ColdFusion: Part 4

Creating Simple Printed Reports in ColdFusion: Part 5

Top Ten Mistakes in ColdFusion
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Many ColdFusion developers use common coding practices that are not optimal and don't follow "best practices". The following article shows 10 different mistakes and coding problems that you may find in your applications that can be easily corrected.

Multiple Insert/Update in ColdFusion
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Dreamweaver has some built-in tools for doing database inserts and updates, but they only handle basic inserts/updates of one record. What if you want to insert multiple records at a time, or update multiple records? Dreamweaver is no help in this case, but using ColdFusion the process is simple. This tutorial will show two often-used methods for doing a multiple insert and multiple update, and the reasons not to use the first method.

Creating Simple Printed Reports in ColdFusion: Part 4
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In Part 2 of this series, we looked at the filename attribute of the cfdocument tag and discussed how it will allow you to save a generated document rather than streaming it directly to the browser. It this installment, we will look at how you can take advantage of that functionality to save and email a document to your user.

The Creating Simple Printed Reports in ColdFusion Series:
Creating Simple Printed Reports in ColdFusion: Part 1
Creating Simple Printed Reports in ColdFusion: Part 2
Creating Simple Printed Reports in ColdFusion: Part 3
Creating Simple Printed Reports in ColdFusion: Part 4
Creating Simple Printed Reports in ColdFusion: Part 5 Coming Soon

Let's Learn ColdFusion: Part 5 - Working with cfincludes
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Creating Simple Printed Reports in ColdFusion: Part 3
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In this installment of this series, we are going to look at some of the additional ColdFusion tags that can be used within the tag to give you more control over the layout and appearance of your PDF of Flashpaper document.

The Creating Simple Printed Reports in ColdFusion Series:
Creating Simple Printed Reports in ColdFusion: Part 1
Creating Simple Printed Reports in ColdFusion: Part 2
Creating Simple Printed Reports in ColdFusion: Part 3
Creating Simple Printed Reports in ColdFusion: Part 4
Creating Simple Printed Reports in ColdFusion: Part 5 Coming Soon

Sending an Email Blast with ColdFusion: Part 3
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ColdFusion makes it very easy to send emails to mulitple recipients from a database using very little code. Part 1 of this series went over some basics, and Part 2 showed a very basic newsletter delivery system, similar to the system we use at Community MX to send our weekly newsletters. Part 3 will show two different scenarios to include line items within the email body—generic line items and recipient-specific line items.

Creating Simple Printed Reports in ColdFusion: Part 2
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For those of us building what are known as Web Applications (web sites that are intended to provide advanced application functionality that often replace desktop programs) there have always been a number of limitation in the web server and browser platform that affect the user experience compared to traditional applications. Modern platforms like Flash (and even DHTML) are answering some of those issues on the client side. On the server side, one of the problems has been generating true banded reporting and creating printable reports from what is displayed on screen.

In the last article, we looked at the most basic use of the cfdocument tag to create PDF and FlashPaper documents out of rendered HTML. Without rehashing the product documentation, let’s look at some of the other attributes of the cfdocument tag that affect how your document is presented.

The Creating Simple Printed Reports in ColdFusion Series:
Creating Simple Printed Reports in ColdFusion: Part 1
Creating Simple Printed Reports in ColdFusion: Part 2
Creating Simple Printed Reports in ColdFusion: Part 3
Creating Simple Printed Reports in ColdFusion: Part 4
Creating Simple Printed Reports in ColdFusion: Part 5 Coming Soon

Creating Simple Printed Reports in ColdFusion - Part 1
Reader Level:

For those of us building what are known as Web Applications (web sites that are intended to provide advanced application functionality that often replace desktop programs) there have always been a number of limitation in the web server and browser platform that affect the user experience compared to traditional applications. Modern platforms like Flash (and even DHTML) are answering some of those issues on the client side. On the server side, one of the problems has been generating true banded reporting and creating printable reports from what is displayed on screen.

Sure, there was always Crystal Reports or some third-party program that could help out. But they were always problematic, in my experience. I wanted something built into my language that allowed those very important features to be executed natively. ColdFusion now allows exactly that with a number of new capabilities to provide instant PDF and FlashPaper documents and intricate banded business reporting. In this article, we will look at creating simple printed reports from generated HTML using the cfdocument tag.

The Creating Simple Printed Reports in ColdFusion Series:
Creating Simple Printed Reports in ColdFusion: Part 1
Creating Simple Printed Reports in ColdFusion: Part 2
Creating Simple Printed Reports in ColdFusion: Part 3
Creating Simple Printed Reports in ColdFusion: Part 4
Creating Simple Printed Reports in ColdFusion: Part 5 Coming Soon

Beating Spam On Your Contact Forms
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In this article we will look at how we can use a very simple method to beat the spam form scripts that populate and submit our forms.

Using a ColdFusion Custom Tag as a Site Template: Part 4 - JumpStarts
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I wrote a series of three articles on how you can use a ColdFusion custom tag to supply the design of every page in your site. Since that time, Community MX has released several JumpStarts — page designs using the latest HTML and CSS techniques to create starting points for your own designs. A JumpStart is also a perfect fit for the use of a ColdFusion custom tag. Heidi Bautista wrote an article about using JumpStarts with ASP.NET master pages — Convert an Existing Site to Use ASP.NET Master Pages and Themes. The ASP.NET master page is very similar in concept to the technique I presented in my series on CF, so this tutorial will cover the same ground for ColdFusion users, using the free North Pole JumpStart.

Creating a ColdFusion Custom Tag for US States
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ColdFusion custom tags are exceptionally useful, as they allow you to put presentation functionality into a file, similar to an include, only more powerful. This article shows how a simple custom tag listing US states and Canadian provinces can be built and used.

Getting Started with Eclipse - Part 2 Free!

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In the second article of this series, you'll learn how to install Eclipse plug-ins for ColdFusion, PHP, and ActionScript.

The Getting Started with Eclipse Series:
Getting Started with Eclipse - Part 1
Getting Started with Eclipse - Part 2
Getting Started with Eclipse - Part 3

All About GUIDs
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If you are familiar with databases you have probably used an autonumber field in Access or an Identity column in SQL Server to have the database assign a unique numerical ID to each record that gets inserted into a table. That works great when there is one table in one database responsible for keeping track of those records. But what if you are eBay or Amazon with database servers strewn across the world to increase reliability and availability? What if you need to take records collected by several databases and merge them back into one dataset and still maintain a unique identifier for each record?

Creating a Simple Blog: Part 6
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There have been five parts in the series on creating a simple blog. The first five parts focused on creating basic functionality to get a basic blog up and running using simple Dreamweaver design tools. This part will show how to incorporate the functionality into a more complex design — specifically, the latest CMX Jumpstart — Inverness. This tutorial will be equally applicable to ColdFusion, ASP, PHP, ASP.NET, or JSP because we will be using standard Dreamweaver server behaviors to create the blog. In the course of merging the dynamic blog into the design, you'll learn the following about merging content with design in general — how to find repeating items and make them dynamic, how to separate parts of an existing design into a module.

Creating a Simple Blog: Part 1 22-Mar-04
Creating a Simple Blog: Part 2 30-Mar-04
Creating a Simple Blog: Part 3 14-Apr-04
Creating a Simple Blog: Part 4 25-May-04
Creating a Simple Blog: Part 5 26-Apr-05

ColdFusion 7 on OS X: Finally, It's Official
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With the 7.01 release of ColdFusion, Macromedia (or perhaps Adobe) has seen the light and officially designated OS X Tiger as a supported platform. There is a slick new Mac installer to go with the new designation, and this tutorial will walk you through the process of installing the latest, greatest, officially supported version of ColdFusion on your Mac.

Building a Receipt on World Pay's Secure Server
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In this tutorial we will look at how we can present our shopping cart customers with a nicely formatted receipt after they have paid. In this instance we will be doing it the World Pay way. Once you have created an account with World Pay you are presented with your own CMS on the World Pay site. From here you can set many parameters, not the least of which allows you to customise the paid and error pages that you will present to your customers once they have completed their transactions.

Using DTS Packages with ColdFusion
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Many people use SQL Server to store their data, however SQL Server is much more involved than simply a server that allows storage for data. Data Transformation Services (DTS) is part of SQL Server and allows you to import and export data, manipulate files on the system, use FTP, among other things. Using some of SQL Server's built-in DTS functionality along with ColdFusion gives your web application access to some of this functionality.

Laszlo: Part 3 - Hello World
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In the third article in our series we learn about the basic component of a Laszlo application, the canvas, and then display the ever-popular "Hello World" text on the canvas.

The Laszlo Series:
Laszlo: Part 1 - Overview
Laszlo: Part 2 - Installation
Laszlo: Part 3 - Hello World
Laszlo: Part 4 - Laszlo Widgets and Elements
Laszlo: Part 5 - Managing Layouts
Laszlo: Part 6 - Working With Data Coming Soon

Testing ColdFusion Forms
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One of the most frequent problems that arises when developing ColdFusion applications is form processing. Often, forms don't work because they don't return the expected results. In this article, you'll learn how to create a form tester page that you can use to view the results of forms submitted via GET and POST. These can be regular HTML forms, or forms created using the cfform tag. You can even test Flash forms in ColdFusion MX 7.

Creating a Simple Blog - Part 5
Reader Level:

One of the frequent questions in the forums is "How do I create a blog?". There are many commercial blog systems out there, and many full-featured blog providers, like Blogger, but you can also create a simple blog using the standard tools of Dreamweaver. This tutorial will be equally applicable to ColdFusion, ASP, PHP, ASP.NET, or JSP because we will be using standard Dreamweaver server behaviors to create the blog. This fifth part of the series will describe how to add a design to the blog, including a sidebar with category, blogroll, and RSS modules.

ColdFusion MX 7: The Newest Version of ColdFusion Free!

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Macromedia has released ColdFusion MX 7. This is a major upgrade to ColdFusion with lots of new features bound to enhance most developer's applications. This article provides an introduction to the new ColdFusion and its many exciting features.

BlueDragon, an Alternative ColdFusion Platform: Part 1 - Overview
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This is the first article in a series that will look at BlueDragon, an alternative web application server which provides an implementation of CFML. Available in several versions including a free-to-use version, BlueDragon provides a viable, cross-platform alternative to Macromeida's ColdFusion MX for running applications developed in CFML.

The series will look at how to install BlueDragon, the basics of administering and configuring BlueDragon, as well as compatibility considerations with ColdFusion MX.

The Blue Dragon Series:
BlueDragon, an Alternative ColdFusion Platform: Part 1 - Overview
BlueDragon, an Alternative ColdFusion Platform: Part 2 - Installing the Standalone Server
BlueDragon, an Alternative ColdFusion Platform: Part 3 - Installing the J2EE Server
BlueDragon, an Alternative ColdFusion Platform: Part 4 - Administering BlueDragon

CMX JumpStart: Liverpool
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The Liverpool JumpStart is a little different than what has gone before. It includes a dynamic ColdFusion login application built with Dreamweaver's User Authentication server behaviours. This allows you to quickly and easily edit the login if you need to do so. The login also supports dual access levels and provides default pages for each level to view, along with a logout page to kill the sessions when your users have completed whatever it was they logged in to do.

Also included are login application pages for .NET, PHP and ASP server models.

This JumpsStart contains 12 tutorials, including video lessons on creating a relational database in Access, using Dreamweaver's User Authentication server behavoiurs and setting a datasource via the ColdFusion administrator.

If you prefer not to use server side code, within the download files you will find a static version of the Liverpool JumpStart.

If you'd like a more detailed description of Liverpool, including screenshots, check out the free article Announcing a New CMX JumpStart: Liverpool.

Calculating Shipping Costs with UPS Online Tools
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Want to add accurate shipping cost selection features to an e-commerce application? Read this article to learn how you can use the free UPS online tools in conjunction with ColdFusion to do just that. You'll also get access to a ColdFusion Component to simplify working with the rates & service selection tool, and you'll be walked through the steps of a working example.

CMX Blog Scroller
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This Flash component enables you to display one or more RSS feeds in Flash Player 7 with a number of customizable options. CMX Blog Scroller automatically parses the XML and displays the latest blog entries.

Includes: CMXBlogScroller.mxp, ColdFusion proxy script, sample FLA file, PDF

Nested Repeat Regions in ColdFusion
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If you've ever wanted to nest data -- such as titles under individual categories, or products under individual headings -- this article will show you how to do it with minimum fuss and muss using ColdFusion and the cfoutput tag.

Sending WebPage Information Directly to a Pager or Cellular Phone
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Sending information collected on your website directly to a clients pager or cell phone is easier than it sounds, and it just might be the extra wow factor you need to impress.

CMX Download Repeat Region Extension
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This extension allows a user to create a downloadable CSV (comma-separated values) or other type of text file that contains the contents of a standard Dreamweaver Repeat Region server behavior (such as a server-side recordset). The extension can also be applied to any server-side content that you want to make downloadable in the browser. This is very useful for creating downloadable files of a results display, such as a product list, a sales report, or a search result.

Simple Dynamic Recordset Sorting Using Stored Procedures
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A stored procedure gives you many benefits when building applications, including web applications using ColdFusion, ASP, and other technologies. They are fast because they are precompiled and they are secure because the database tables are not being accessed directly. One thing that is a little tricky in working with stored procedures is building dynamic queries. You can build a SQL statement as a string within a stored procedure and execute it using the EXEC statement (or xp_executeSQL), but this also defeats one of the purposes of building your functionality into a stored procedure: the statement is not compiled when it is built dynamically. This article shows one way of creating dynamic SQL on the fly while still allowing the stored procedure to be precompiled.

Creating a Login System
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Learn how to use built-in ColdFusion MX security to require a login and password for your applications. You'll also get a chance to learn how to grant access to specific sections of the application based on the user's roles.

Better Error Messages for CF and Flash Remoting
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There are many times while developing ColdFusion or (especially) Flash Remoting applications that the default log files and error messages supplied by ColdFusion and/or the NetConnection debugger don't give you enough information. For those situations, the technique shown in this article will show more than the typical amount of error info.

Beyond ColdFusion Query Basics
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Queries are an important part of nearly every ColdFusion application. In this article, learn how to create more efficient queries by using built-in ColdFusion features, such as query caching and queries of queries.

Affiliate Tracking System For ColdFusion
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ColdFusion users have an application.cfm file which makes building an application much easier in many respects. The reason is that this file can do a variety of different things because it is always the first file executed no matter what page was requested in your application. You can use this to your advantage in an affiliate tracking application, such as in an e-store. This article will show how to build it.

Creating a Simple Blog Part 4
Reader Level:

One of the frequent questions in the forums is "How do I create a blog?". There are many commercial blog systems out there, and many full-featured blog providers, like Blogger, but you can also create a simple blog using the standard tools of Dreamweaver. This tutorial will be equally applicable to ColdFusion, ASP, PHP, ASP.NET, or JSP because we will be using standard Dreamweaver server behaviors to create the blog. This fourth part of the series will describe how to add categories to the blog by modifying the pages you've already created and also how to display the number of comments on each item.

Better Debug Info for ColdFusion Development
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ColdFusion does not have a lot of functionality to aid in debugging your applications. The built-in debug information that you can access through the ColdFusion administrator gives you some basic information, but if you are using complex objects, structures, or CFCs, you are left without a way to examine these constructs. The technique shown in this article can also be used in a production environment because it can be turned on through a URL variable, and is tied to the user's session.

Creating a Simple Blog Part 2
Reader Level:

One of the frequent questions in the forums is "How do I create a blog?". There are many commercial blog systems out there, and many full-featured blog providers, like Blogger, but you can also create a simple blog using the standard tools of Dreamweaver. This tutorial will be equally applicable to ColdFusion, ASP, PHP, ASP.NET, or JSP because we will be using standard Dreamweaver server behaviors to create the blog. Part 1 of the tutorial can be found at http://www.communitymx.com/abstract.cfm?cid=7CC52. Part 2 will focus on adding more features to the blog, such as a system for adding and viewing comments, and more administration options.

Creating a Simple Blog Part 1
Reader Level:

Many people ask "how can I build my own blog?" This tutorial will show how to create a simple blog using point-and-click features of Dreamweaver. For that reason, this tutorial can be followed for any server model that Dreamweaver supports.

CMX CF MultiPart
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CMX CF MultiPart is ideal to use for emailing your newsletters. This server behavior includes the following features:

1. Attaches both an html and plain text document to your email so that email clients that cannot read html will see a plain text version.
2. Sends to all of the email addresses you choose within a recordset.

Works with ColdFusion 6.1

CMX Zip CFC
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This is a ready-to-use ColdFusion Component you can use to easily create ZIP archives right from within your ColdFusion applications. No outside sofware (such as WinZip) is required and the component only uses Java classes available in any standard ColdFusion MX installation.

CMX Unzip CFC
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Use this ColdFusion component to extract files from ZIP archives from within your ColdFusion applications.

ColdFusion: Getting Into Good Coding Habits Free!

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In this article we will look at good coding practices for evaluating form variables and guarding against url variable errors. We will also look at customising Dreamweaver's default ColdFusion template to prepare a standard set of comments to make revisiting our older files so much easier!

Flash Remoting in Flash MX 2004 Free!

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Many people are wondering if Flash Remoting still supported in Flash MX 2004. The answer is “Yes”, however I think the next few months will be a transition period. The latest Flash Remoting components from Macromedia still utilize ActionScript 1.0 code, but the good news is that everything still seems to work. In this article I'll try to answer a few of those questions that have appeared since the release of Flash MX 2004 and Flash Professional.

CMX EZ Mail
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CMX EZ Mail will email the contents of any form to any recipient you wish, and then redirect the user to any page you specify. You only have to fill out four simple fields in the server behavior. This behavior is great for creating a quick Contact Us page, or anything similar. This behavior is for CFMX and ASP/VB

CMX Email Any Form
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CMX Email Any Form is a server behavior for ColdFusion MX or ASP/VB. You can use it one of two ways:

1. Use it on an asp or cfm page that has a form on it, and it will automatically gather all of your form fields and email the form to whoever you specify.
2. Apply it to a blank asp or cfm page and it can email all of the forms on your site.

Example for scenario 2: If you have a Contact Us form, a Survey form and a User Feedback form all on separate pages, you can submit any or all of those pages to the blank page you apply the server behavior to. Something like a 'Catch-All' for your forms. This extension will work with CFMAIL and CDONTS.

Porting Pollster to SQL Server Free!

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One of the most popular widgets in Macromedia's DevNet Resource Kit Volume 4 (DRK 4) is Pollster. This tutorial includes everything you need to migrate Pollster to SQL Server, including a SQL script and instructions on revising the application's ColdFusion components.

ColdFusion MX: The Red Sky Upgrade Free!

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ColdFusion MX has been out for over a year now, and has been becoming more and more reliable and stable with each updater. Updaters 1, 2, and 3 each addressed bugs and problems with CFMX. The latest update, the ColdFusion MX 6.1 updater (code named Red Sky) was released today and offers much more than simple bug fixes. The release can be considered a true upgrade. The best part of the upgrade is that it's free.

CMX CF Image Popup
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The CMXCF Image Popup serve behavior works with your database to open a popup window containing an image from your database. The window will size itself to the dimensions of the image, and will close if the user clicks on it. If no reference to the image exists in your database, the behavior will allow you to display an alternative thumbnail image that will not open a popup window. It has the following features Popup window will size itself to the dimensions of the image, as called out in the height/width fields of your database. Allows you to display an alternate thumbnail on your page if there is no image for a particular record. The alternate image will not open up a popup window.

Using a ColdFusion Custom Tag as a Site Template Part 3
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ColdFusion custom tags allow you to build a flexible template for your site that will feed every page on the site. Part 1 of this series showed the basic concepts of the custom tag and how to use one as a site template. The tutorial addressed the setup and implementation of a custom tag, and showed how to supply a title to the document dynamically. Part 2 showed you how to add other features to this template, such as JavaScript, CSS, and meta tags. Part 3 will show how to incorporate a table layout or a div layout in setting up your template.

Using a ColdFusion Custom Tag as a Site Template Part 1
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ColdFusion developers have had Custom Tags in their arsenal of tricks since the early days of ColdFusion. With CFMX, the tag has made it even easier to use custom tags on your pages. With the introduction of ColdFusion Components (CFC) in CFMX, the custom tag has taken a back seat to the versitility of CFCs, but some things are ideally suited to the ColdFusion Custom Tag API. This article will address one use of a ColdFusion custom tag: building a flexible template for your site that will feed every page on the site.

ColdFusion - CFML Basics - Part 2
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Part 2 in a series of articles that will take you through the basic tags used in the CFML language. Providing you with an explanation of the tag along with examples. This installment covers the <cfquery> tag.

The CFML Basics Series:
ColdFusion - CFML Basics - Part 1
ColdFusion - CFML Basics - Part 2
ColdFusion - CFML Basics - Part 3

Word Wacker Extension for Dreamweaver MX
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Have you ever needed to display a snippet of a field from a database with ColdFusion, but wanted to determine the number of words to display instead of characters? This extension will do that for you and more. Word Wacker will take a field from a ColdFusion query (recordset) and "trim" it down to the number of words you provide. It will also allow you to strip the HTML from the "trimmed" snippet, as well as, allow you to maintain line breaks when displaying the snippet.

Dynamic Letter Anchors extension
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Frequently on a dynamic page that displays a long list of content, such as a list of names, you want to allow a user to jump down to a specific letter of the alphabet. On a static list, this is easy -- just insert anchor links at key places on your page where the first letter of a word changes. On a dynamic page, it is not as easy. Using this extension, you can create a list of links for your data AND create the dynamic anchors to go along with them.

Consuming the CMX Web Service with ColdFusion Free!

Reader Level:

Community MX publishes a web service that will display information about the latest content available from the site. This service can be used by anyone who knows how to consume a web service. The Community MX web service utilizes a standard .wsdl file that can be consumed by any technology that can consume a web service. The web service is located at http://www.communitymx.com/services/cmxfeed.wsdl. The web service exposes 3 methods: getContent: grabs the latest content descriptions available from Community MX. searchContent: search the content at Community MX for relevant content getContentTypes: the latest content types are available as a list for your applications as well (articles, extensions, etc).

Protecting Server Privacy During CF Errors
Reader Level:

When errors occur on your ColdFusion page or site, are you inadvertently exposing information that could be useful to hackers? This tutorial points up the challenge and solution to this common problem.

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