016 Adventures with ColdFusion and ContentBox in the Wild, with Seth Engen

Seth Engen talks about “Adventures with ColdFusion and ContentBox in the Wild” in this episode of the ColdFusion Alive Podcast, with host Michaela Light. Seth is one of the speakers of the upcoming Into The Box ColdFusion Conference, where he will talk about ContentBox In The Wild. In his ITB talk, Seth will mention a variety of specific real-world scenarios where ContentBox has answered business needs.  "We're dealing with in theming essentially HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. This is the one area where it's probably most like other content management systems but with ContentBox I think there's a real power." - Seth Engen Episode highlights What the heck is ContentBox? How is it different from other open source ColdFusion CMSs? Built On top of ColdBox framework Security good Scalable Great support from Ortus Why use ContentBox Themes and what are the amazing things that you can you do with them? How ContentBox widgets make it easy to program common business needs A CFC with a UI that you can drag and drop in the content page Some data and properties are exposed in the UI so that user admins can edit directly How creating ContentBox modules helps with integration to other software Integrate with 3rd party software such as Stripe to charge credit cards Integrate Full Calendar and Google Calendar API into one module Called from a widget Why are you proud to use CF? WWIT to make CF more alive this year? Community Education such as conferences Education to folks who have old info about CFML What are you looking forward to at Into The Box? Learning Networking ContentBox In The Wild ContentBox is an open source CMS ready and waiting for use in your next project. See a variety of specific real world scenarios where ContentBox has answered business needs. This demonstration will outline business needs and their associated solution using a ContentBox theme, widget, or module. Objectives: Customizing Themes w/ Customized Menu Solutions Creating Widgets for Common Business Needs Developing Modules for Robust ContentBox Integration Mentioned in this episode ContentBox ColdBox BootSwatch theme toggler ForgeBox download themes, widgets and modules CKTemplates - WYSIWYG editor integration FontAwesome icons and themes  Code from the talk is available on ForgeBox and GitHub Ortus Developer week Speaker details Seth Engen is a co-owner of Computer Know How, a Wisconsin-based technology firm that he started with Curt Gratz in 1997. At the companies start he was introduced to CFML (version 4) and has been programming in the language ever since. Seth really enjoys creating web applications with great user interface experiences. Links Twitter Computer Know How (* WWIT = What Would It Take) Interview transcript Michaela Light:               Welcome back to the show. I'm here with Seth Engen from Computer Know How. In fact, he was the co-owner of that. Founded it quite awhile ago back when ColdFusion 4 was out. We're going to be talking about adventures with ColdFusion and ContentBox in the wild. Not just theoretical but practical. We'll check in what ContentBox is, how it's different from other open source ColdFusion CMS's, why you should be using ContentBox themes, and some of the amazing stuff you can do with them. How ContentBox widgets make it easy to program common business needs, how creating modules help with integrating ContentBox out of software. Welcome, Seth. Seth Engen:                     Thanks for having me. Michaela Light:               Let's just start off for folks who don't know, what the heck is ContentBox? Seth Engen:                     Well, ContentBox as the website and some of the documentation indicates is just an open source CMS, Content Management System. It's very similar to a WordPress, something like that. But for us, those familiar with ColdFusion and have written and programmed in ColdFusion over the years, ContentBox is written in ColdFusion and built on top of ColdBox. Some of the Ortus solutions suite of products, stuff we've interacted with for about as long as we've interacted with ColdFusion overall but just a really solid content management system for your use in your business and with things that you do on the web and those things that you need custom programmed. A great content management system for your use. Michaela Light:               Cool. You know, there's a lot of open source ColdFusion CMS's out there. Mura, FarCry, Preside, if I'm getting the name right. How is ContentBox different from those other than it's built on top of ColdBox? Seth Engen:                     Actually that is probably the biggest difference I think. I haven't had a lot of experience with those. I think the difference, and even with other non-ColdFusion based CMS's but they've really built ContentBox with security in mind initially. Very much a modular architecture. Designed it, and we've seen this with some of our business customers and their successes, designed it to scale. Read more And to continue learning how to make your ColdFusion apps more modern and alive, I encourage you to download our free ColdFusion Alive Best Practices Checklist.Because… perhaps you are responsible for a mission-critical or revenue-generating CF application that you don’t trust 100%, where implementing new features is a painful ad-hoc process with slow turnaround even for simple requests.What if you have no contingency plan for a sudden developer departure or a server outage? Perhaps every time a new freelancer works on your site, something breaks. Or your application availability, security, and reliability are poor.And if you are depending on ColdFusion for your job, then you can’t afford to let your CF development methods die on the vine.You’re making a high-stakes bet that everything is going to be OK using the same old app creation ways in that one language — forever.All it would take is for your fellow CF developer to quit or for your CIO to decide to leave the (falsely) perceived sinking ship of CFML and you could lose everything—your project, your hard-won CF skills, and possibly even your job.Luckily, there are a number of simple, logical steps you can take now to protect yourself from these obvious risks.No Brainer ColdFusion Best Practices to Ensure You Thrive No Matter What Happens NextColdFusion Alive Best Practices ChecklistModern ColdFusion development best practices that reduce stress, inefficiency, project lifecycle costs while simultaneously increasing project velocity and innovation.√ Easily create a consistent server architecture across development, testing, and production√ A modern test environment to prevent bugs from spreading√ Automated continuous integration tools that work well with CF√ A portable development environment baked into your codebase… for free! Learn about these and many more strategies in our free ColdFusion Alive Best Practices Checklist.