Ideas?
I need your help. I'm looking for candidates for a good web-based community project. By that, I mean a web application that would be of considerable help to the CF community. One example might be a CFC directory where components could be shared, voted on, etc.
Perhaps you don't have a fully fleshed-out idea -- only an area that causes you some grief. That's OK. I'm hoping that by "crowdsourcing" the idea, we can come up with something worth building.
Ideas?
I think people generally want to be helpful, but their time is very limited. If they can help someone by leaving a small feedback message (look at twitter’s popularity for instance), then they will. But they don’t want to commit themselves to a long drawn out agreement.
So let's say a new person wanted to take the Hal Helms ColdFusion workbook. The first question would be something like: "Write a Hello World application", which would have an infinite number of correct answers. Creativity wouldn't be stifled if the assignment were graded by a human rather than a multiple choice test.
Some of the questions could be graded automatically, but the idea was to make a connection between new people and mentors.
The mentor would get an email that included the question and the answer. A set of radio buttons are displayed to grade the answer as well as a textbox to provide additional comments.
The items in question wouldn't necessary have to live/be downloadable from the site. Some of them could simply be pointers to where the resources live (RIAforge, CFLib, etc.), so you could include particular blog posts and tutorials as well.
Each item would be categorized by tags which users can add to/vote up such that each item ends up with a tag cloud that emphasizes what the item is really about. User can then vote on the item itself and provide feedback/commentary.
http://bytespringcms.riaforge.org
http://camiicms.riaforge.org
http://cfnuke.riaforge.org
http://katapult.riaforge.org
http://yacc.riaforge.org
I don't know what Hal's initial intent here was, but having an open source, community developed CMS solution along the likes of Drupal or PHPNuke is something that ColdFusion does not have right now. If it was done in a well documented manner, with a very clean and flexible API, it could be a very nice resource from both a teaching perspective as well as a usable tool.
But, the intent here was not to hijack Hal's post, so lets get back to coming up with ideas.
You would take your code and load it into a directory under the approot of this application. It would crawl through the directories and files and make a list to display on the main console of the app. Developer A would come along and 'check out' the template for review. Sort of like a version control system, and other developers wouldn't be able to check out the same file at the same time. Developer A then reviews the code, checks it back in, marks it pass/fail,and leaves any comments. Then Developer B would check out the code, review it, check it back in, mark it pass/fail, and post any comments.
Each file gets reviewed by two developers and both of them must mark it as 'pass' before it is considered to go to staging / production. Developers A and B can do each piece of code as they have time, so if it is a big app and they are working on their own stuff too they don't have to review everything all at once.
Every one I've looked at (including most in John's list) seem to have one of the following problems:
1) costs too much.
2) too complicated to use.
3) lacking in features.
4) can't be run in a shared hosting environment.
Maybe a good CF CMS is already out there and I just haven't found it yet. But, I would think that if ASP and PHP can have popular, successful CMS apps that everyone knows about and flocks to when they need one, then CF can too.
Sorry, Hal, I didn't mean to hijack your post. You asked "what would be of considerable help to the CF community", and that was the first thing I thought of.
@Eric: No, you haven't hijacked the post. It's meant to stimulate just this kind of discussion. I confess I've rolled my own CMS. This was mainly due to having used a couple I didn't like, and feeling that, in the long run, having my own would give me more flexibility. But certainly something like one of the Nukes would be really handy to have.
http://www.mangoblog.org/
Enjoy!
Another idea would be a high-quality web based Subversion (SVN) "manager" that allowed you to use SVN to do deployments in a nice UI, instead of various ANT/command line headaches. Something similar to Deployment Builder (http://www.rendered-dreams.com/blog/post.cfm/using...)
It's very easy to work with from a CFML perspective; Sava CMS has a fully extensible API for customization and integration, and in the next few weeks we're releasing a plugin architecture that will provide developers with the ability to create any extensions or customizations they want, and to distribute them in a single code bundle.
Here's a quick look at a few of the organizations that use Sava CMS: Apple, Intel, the University of British Columbia, CalTrans, AmtrakCalifornia.com, Heath Ceramics, the California Restaurant Association, California Building Industry Association (and many more). The new Railo sites (launching soon) will be using Sava CMS - on Railo of course - and Sava runs great on ColdFusion, Railo and even OpenBD.
If you haven't checked out Sava CMS yet, you can grab the code for free from our site; we even offer a self-contained demo that we call Sava Express that you can download and run on your desktop with two clicks (really) with no installation issues (it uses Railo's fantastic Railo Express CMFL runtime engine).
We hope that Sava CMS is useful to the CFML community, and we believe that it has the potential to increase the appreciation of how powerful and productive CMFL development can be to people that are currently using other programming languages.
Interesting: indeed.com sort of already does this. Search for (cfml or coldfusion or "cold fusion") and then the left nav includes:
Location (just in case anyone was curious exactly how much Metro DC dominates when it comes to CF)
* Washington, DC (302)
* Columbia, MD (87)
* Arlington, VA (78)
* New York, NY (78)
* Herndon, VA (48)
* Hampton, VA (41)
* Chicago, IL (38)
* Los Angeles, CA (37)
* San Antonio, TX (37)
* Rockville, MD (35)
* Houston, TX (35)
* Dallas, TX (32)
* Reston, VA (32)
* Laurel, MD (32)
* Bethesda, MD (30)
Salary
* $50,000+ (2453)
* $70,000+ (1221)
* $90,000+ (506)
* $110,000+ (115)
* $130,000+ (38)
Company
* SAIC (148)
* Robert Half Technology (114)
* Bae Systems (94)
* Lockheed Martin (86)
* CACI International (86)
* Unlisted Company (86)
* 1CPlusPlusStreet.com (68)
* Deloitte (66)
* General Dynamics Information Technology (64)
* Association of American Medical Colleges (54)
* CyberCoders Engineering (48)
* Perot Systems Government Services (48)
* Northrop Grumman (46)
* SRA International (44)
* TEKsystems (40)
1) eCommerce (looks like the cfCommerce project has stalled?)
2) a full-featured Forum (like phpBB)
I also want to urge Eric Cobb and others looking for an open source CF CMS to check out Sava CMS (gosava.com). It's a very full featured and flexible CMS which can be extended using custom code (even using frameworks) using their plugin architecure. It also can be used in shared hosting (as long as you're on CF8 using the latest JDK).
A code base!
Google has something (http://code.google.com/) but its not designed the way I think developers would want to use it.
Imagine a website where you could lookup or search for raw code on anything CF. from a simple function to full CMS code. then imagine a place where anyone can amend anyones elses code online. no downloading just raw code.
what this would mean is no matter what you are into could be a CMS, Ecommerce etc you can contribute.
I know we have CFLIB and others which I am thankful for but thats not very interactive. others are just a list of projects. so my idea is a mix of...
cflib.org +
wikipedia +
code.google.com +
livedocs
not a big project then LOL.
out of the forums on RIAForge, Galleon and CFMBB (also based on Galleon) are the only forums that are mature in any way. All the others seem to be at a very early beta or alpha stage.
Also, with all due respect, it even says on the Galleon page that it is a "simple" forum "focused on the heaviest-used features of most forum applications". By "full-featured", I meant something with all the bells and whistles, like forum heirarchies with unlimited levels, member features like private messaging and groups, multi-language support, flexible templating, fancy ajaxified admin console etc. For example, check out this feature list from the PHP-based SMF forum: http://www.simplemachines.org/about/features.php
I think Galleon does a great job serving the needs of a lot of people. But you're only one guy. By starting a community-driven forum project (perhaps using Galleon as a starting point) and using the power of CFML, I'm sure we could have a project to rival phpBB, SMF, and vBulletin.
I think for _Hal's_ suggestion though it would make sense to work in a space that doesn't already have a lot of movement in in it already.
My 2 cents.
some other ideas on top of the codebase would be...
2) some sort of subversion hookup and tools in coldfusion, not sure if it is possible.
3) a image editor/manipulation application. we have this cool new cfimage tag in cf8 so why not have a image editor. i.e. users could then add it into their fav frameworks.
webmail app sounds good, proletterfusion is a email marketing system in CF but its not a mail client
i.e cf-ezcart.com cartweaver.com
An ecommerce project would be something I would like to contribute to. I do have my own newebia.co.uk/ecommerce-website-design.html but its not OS ready or could meet Hals strict OO standards I am sure.
ecommerce would get a vote for me, but its not my first choice.
Anyway, don't count on me. I'm over committed as it is. ;)
I think what we're really lacking now is not a good CMS, but a CMS that has a kabillion plugins large/small, which is what ultimately makes a CMS successful. Personally I hope that's Sava some day, if only because that's where I'll be directing my plugin efforts.
I agree with the whole phpBB thread of thinking, and would love to see it built from the ground up using a modern framework. eCommerce would be cool too, if it was built with broad enough strokes to be flexible enough for all sorts of uses (products, services, scheduling).
When I meet people and they ask "So what do you do?" I'd like to say "I do eCommerce websites for people like you".
That's a lot better than explaining what ColdFusion or SQL Server is.
Plus, if a new person were checking out ColdFusion, the minute they sell their first eCommerce site, they would instantly become a ColdFusion evangelist.
Also the Magento has emerged as the preeminent OS eCommerce package in the PHP/MySQL space (www.magentocommerce.com), so maybe we should look at that one to start thinking about ideas on what sort of features to include.
to be a good e-commerce system I think it must have...
product and content management
payment gateways and custom gateways integration
order management
anyway maybe jumping to conclusions here but ecommerce project is starting to sound good. another vote here!
Of course, I don't think we have 'decided' that it shall be ecommerce. Hal makes that call.
I've also just stared using SAVA cms and have been cautiously optimistic, there still early in the game and can definitely use better documentation.
I would love to see a community support around an existing open-source project like Joomla or Mambo as that is what really could make this a great product.
I know your posting was for new ideas, however I might suggest the "adoption" of an existing project which could use the support.
The more open-source, enterprise type level projects that ColdFusion has I think the better off the community is as a whole.
of Joomla or an OS e-commerce application with the features
of Magento. In my opinion, the lack of these types of applications
are what's hurting the CF community. I would be willing to
assist as well. In fact, we started writting one and only got
the backend admin done for catalog management. I would be willing to donate
the code that was done.
It's functional but still needs a little work. It's called
"cfsecure" and I own "cfsecure.com". I would be willing to open
this up to a team that had the time to finish where I left off.
Any takers? I'm just too busy to keep up with it. Maybe we
could post it to riaforge?
I agree with what Mike said; not having solid community CMS and eCommerce apps limits the size of the community. I think the groundwork for the CMS is there, so eCommerce seems a good choice. I'd forgo our current roll-your-own plans to participate in a community eCommerce project in a second, especially if it was designed with a 'plugs-in' mentality as opposed to a 'is your website' one. I hate arrogant apps that assume they own app.cfm and app.cfc and have to be coerced into playing nice with everything else that's going to be there (small exceptions granted to a CMS).
I would agree. I would like a version like Magento. I was
hoping for more out of the www.cfcommerce.org group but they've
stalled.
Also, for anyone interested, I've created a LinkedIn group for us
to communicate and recruite help as well (Open Source ColdFusion) : http://www.linkedin.com/e/vgh/1800353/
@Eric & others - as far as a free Open-Source CMS based on CF is considered, I really recommend you give SavaCMS a one hour try-out on the weekend - it definitely gets my vote for easy-of-installation, professional back-end and very flexible development. Some super-geeks may obviously criticize something with any system, but for me it has helped me build websites faster than ever, and a scheuled one-hour client intro via Skype to teach them how to edit their pages and add new press releases was over in seven minutes - it was just all clear to them - nice!
Now, what I'd love to see happening is to make Galleon Forums (which I also use and love), into a SavaCMS "plug-in". Apparently that's possible and not too difficult, but far to complex for my means probably. I did the German translation of the SavaCMS back-end as my contribution over a couple of weekend-hours, maybe someone can add the Galleon Forum? :-)
All the best,
Jonas
A CMS plug-in / add-on repository would be nice.
We are working on online contest for a couple of years, and I will be doing a contest plug-in for SAVA, and some other marketing plug-in.
But I am sure other people or company are currently working on plug-in that I don't know.
So it would be nice to have a common site where we can share those plugs-in or maybe sell them.
I doesn't have to be SAVA only, but a site like that would be helpfull for someone choosing a CFM CMS to look at what plugs-in available and make a choice.
Thanks
Like several other people in this thread, I too have developed a couple (closed-source) ecomm apps since a viable OS option wasn't available.
I've actually been having thoughts of open-sourcing my current solution to jump start a community project.
I'm already contributing payment gateways to Brian Ghidinelli's cfPayment project.
Today it is not necessary anymore having warehouse as a desktop application and what desktop app can do what web cannot?
Security? Performance? Workflow? Scanning? EDI? all these web (ColdFusion) can do easly.
Pluse warehouse is a part of eCommerce, it also can be as an hosting solution for small companies, they just can rent it.