The Honey House Buzz

CF "Just Like Visual Basic"

Mon, 30 Aug 2010 14:42:00 -0600

Wow, what a day. A local company needed some input on just what coldfusion was. When I asked what they thought it was, the reply was

Someone said it is just like Visual Basic

My comment was that it was more mature than that. Much so... Visual Basic on steriods with a rocket pack, and anti-gravity boots, super tool belt, and a cool red cape, maybe. Bottom line, I am thrilled that we will not be the only CF shop in town :).

Two New Facelifts Rolled Out This Week

Wed, 11 Aug 2010 10:22:00 -0600

Two sites got facelifts and freshenups in the past few weeks. Aiken's Makin was updated to coordinate the site with the new poster and marketing materials for the annual festival. Adelphi Christian Academy was revamped from an outdated Elexio CMS system into CF and updated to reflect the school's new branding strategy. Both are CF and both enjoy the rapid development CF and CSS offers. I love it when a plan comes together.

Goodby CFUnited, Perhaps next year

Sat, 07 Aug 2010 17:36:00 -0600

I have planned unsuccessfully to get to CFUnited. But the for last 6+ years, other obligations have interfered for that week..... So, I get my oxes out of the ditch (which included a funeral, a few surgeries to repair cycling injuries, mom-in-law getting 2 hip replacements...you get the picture) to clear July-August 2011 to attend Next Year -- 2011... (sigh) My friend Gene Godsey broke that news to me, no next year.... (sigh). So Here's My VOTE: Have it somewhere, somehow, someway and Honey House Web Designs WILL be there! PLease, please (please)....

HHWD Hiring ColdFusion Developers - Updated

Tue, 03 Aug 2010 08:59:00 -0600

WOW! What a year! Due to our expanding backlog of work, Honey House Web Designs is expanding our workforce. Update: We are looking for experienced CF coders, as well as subcontractors and Internet IT professionals. If you are a Coldfusion developer who is proficient in

CF 8 or 9,
CFC beans and Data Objects,
CSS based designs,
Java
Server Management

If you are proficient in Flash/Flex, CFEclipse, FusionDebug, these are added bonus. Candidates should live in the South East, (no relocation offered). Some telecommuting may be possible within a 150 mile radius in the beginning, but you must be an organized self-starter who can work without tons of oversight. Please send your resume and project sample links to hhd - at - honeyhousedesigns.com (you know the schpeal).

If You couldn't get a hold of HHWD today....

Thu, 17 Dec 2009 21:45:00 -0600

UPDATED 12/17 6:40pm PST: Some T-Mobile customers in the Southeastern United States and Puerto Rico experienced intermittent service degradation for voice and data services earlier today. We are pleased to report that T-Mobile has fixed the equipment malfunction. Full service has been restored to our customers. We again apologize for any inconvenience to impacted customers in the region. Discuss Well, that was me. HHWD office phone lines run off of T-mobile. Not good. Worse was that the cells were out as well. We could call out, but no one could call in. Thankfully it was the end of the day. never good for business to be down.

RANT -- AT&T New Yahoo Mail Servers are a Deal Breaker

Sat, 01 Aug 2009 08:49:00 -0600

AT&T DSL broadband has been migrating customers to their "new", "improved" mail servers... 3rd party, Yahoo. While Yahoo is a fine company, this move was another terrible step in AT&T's continuing downward spiral of not being in-tuned with their customers. My business, while growing tremendously, has a home office. I want to be able to send emails with my business email account name, regardless of the ISP I use to connect. Up until my account was migrated, this was easy. AT&T (formerly Bellsouth) used my ISP email account to transparently verify the account as legitimate and allow mail to be sent. My "to", "from" and "reply to"'s could be anything I wanted... honeyhousedesigns.com, hotmail.com, yahoo.com, etc. So when a recipient got an email from me, they saw my business email address in the from and reply to fields and could reply through that business account. NO LONGER! NOW... Any AND EVERY email sent must have my AT&T email address as the from AND the reply to. So, the recipient will receive email branded with AT&T's email address (note, one I don't use at all...ever). If the recipient just hit reply, the email goes to that account, not my business account. And according to AT&T, that is just the way it will be. Tough noogies on me for using a home office with "residential" DSL. GET THIS THOUGH! For triple the monthly DSL fee I pay now, my DSL can be "upgraded" internally at the office to allow me to have the functionality I want. No line changes, no new installations, just pay them more money and they will come through with the goods. But for how long until the next "gotcha"? Seems more like extortion to me than a "new improved" service. As a small business, we at Honey House Web Designs consider telecommuting and home offices an excellent resource to keeping overhead low and being able to pass that savings along to customers and be able to employ more people. But our business is important enough that we want to brand it with OUR name, not Ma Bell's. So, we begin the process of finding a provider who will provide us with what we need at a reasonable price. Bye-bye Bell

Don't Sacrifice Value by Using "Lowest Bid" - Back to Basics

Sat, 16 May 2009 07:47:00 -0600

In this economy we are all focusing on growing our business and maintaining an adequate revenue stream. Many consultants and web designers are lowering prices to better serve clients. And clients are more than ever shopping around for the "best deal". However, remember, "you will always get what you pay for". Focusing on price alone as the indicator of which Web Design company receives your project ignores your own business needs. You want a professional site that reflects your business style and saavy. You want a site that peaks your customer's interest. You want value. Value, is your business's total worth. It is the intangible benefits your business receives by having a great website and it is the potential for that site to bring customers to you. Value does supersede price. Always be willing to pay a fair price for quality work. You will get more than you pay for when price is not the sole consideration for a website. This is the time to get back to the basics of running a business. Value, service, integrity, and quality are basic to your business success.

Building Relationships and Business by "Buying Local" with a Handshake

Mon, 06 Apr 2009 06:35:00 -0600

I have read that for every $100 spent "buying local" puts $46 back into the community, whereas spending $100 in a big chain location only returns $13 to the community. I am not so sure how these numbers were derived at, but the employees of both big and local locations need paychecks, which your $100 provides. Those employees still need to purchase good and items as well. If you are a small business, what you should recognize is your potential for future business that can be developed by doing getting your goods and services "locallY". Developing a reputation as a pleasant person and building relationships with other small businesses and knowing each other by name can go a long way to helping your business. Here are some 1 minute or less ways to meet, greet, and begin building that relationship with other small businesses in your community: 1) Spend 1 extra minute to learn the person's name you are dealing with. Introduce yourself with a smile and a handshake. Tell them what you do and that it was a pleasure to do business with them. (even if it is just the after-school cashier). Do this for every business you encounter and you'll become a welcome guest in your community. 2) Spend 30 seconds to Thank them for their service, especially if it was good. Write an extra thank you on your meal receipt and note if you received exceptional service at a restaurant. The server will see it, and probably the manager on duty. If you are a regular at that restaurant, your service will improve as a result of your "reputation". 3) Put notes of thanks and encouragement to your mail carrier... especially on really nasty days. (this won't necessarily help your business with the mail service, but it might get you occasional front door delivery which does help YOUR business). You never know how the impact of a handshake, smile, and 30 seconds of "I appreciate your efforts" or "Thank you for your help today" can go a long way in building your business. People who have no direct ability to add to your bottom line have friends and relatives who do that the impression you make will get around to others. In our tight downturn of an economy, when stakes and tensions run high, make sure you never have a shortage of smiles.

April Fools Virus.... Conficker

Wed, 01 Apr 2009 10:05:00 -0600

April Fools again... and Viruses are released again. This one, called "Conficker" has been out since late 2008, but if you are infected, is supposed to turn your computer into a zombie drone and phone home to it's servers. Here is more information on the worm: http://www.microsoft.com/protect/computer/viruses/worms/conficker.mspx This begs the questions... 1) Am I up to date on Virus Software and M$ updates? 2) WHY oh WHY would any nefarious hacker announced that a worm would attack on a given day? Publicity? -- Yes... but would that make the hacker super-intelligent or set them up to be caught & arrested sooner (aka super-stupid). Historically, the best means of attacking enemies was surprise and stealth.... hmmmmmmm.

CF / IIS Service LockUp when using CFMX7, MS Access, and File Uploads

Tue, 31 Mar 2009 19:09:00 -0600

A client regularly uploads an Access database (I know, I know, not the best one for the job.. but the point is another blog/argument) which is then a CFMX7 datasource. Occasionally and intermittently over the last few years, the .mdb file would be locked, showing the corresponding .ldb file and the uploads would fail. But these files weren't just locked. They were so tightly bound, that FTP deletes would not delete. Even the hosting support personnel could not delete. They had to shut down the CF server, and IIS to delete the files and then restart. Not good news for other accounts the shared hosting server. Even more interesting is that all of a sudden, the problem became more frequent (locking 6 times yesterday, and 5 more today)... and thus, replicable. It appears as if CF Access datasource connection creates the lock (appropriately) when a query of any sort is performed, even SELECT statements. Attempting an upload while the file is "locked" however doesn't just reject the upload, it corrupts the files and the service. We don't know what changed, but every single upload now locks. and I suspect the java method that creates the datasource link may lock the database at the application.cfc level. (Any CF/JAVA wizards, please feel free to chime in on this suspician if you know one way or the other). IIS is v6. To correct this, have the CF Administrator UNcheck that the "maintain database connections" . Creating a "dummy" query is only for pre CF6.

Better way of Initializing from CFEclipse Bean Wizard

Fri, 13 Mar 2009 10:35:00 -0600

I have been using the CFEclipse to create the Bean, DAO, and Gateway CFCs. Not because it is a perfect tool, but while I am still learning how to manage working in a Framework better (and faster), the CFEclipse provides a nice foundation to start from. Also, in the Lynda.com tutorials, David Gassner uses these wizards and customizes get/set bean cfc to be able to reinitialize the bean variables from a form. This is great and has helped me wrap my head around the easily confusing method of setter and getters. BUT! When the form doesn't have a variable that wants to be set by the bean, I have to pad cfif statements everywhere.... Not good and with large tables a real PITA. So I came up with a better way of doing it using StructKeyArrays.... Here is an example of a simple event table Bean created by CFEclipse:



	
	
	
	
	
	
		//Initialize the CFC with the default properties values.
		this.eventid = 0;
		this.event = "";
		this.eventdesc = "";
		this.eventtime = "";
		this.displayme = "";

David customizes the code a bit to accept a form structure and reset the values:

This is great... except in real practice, if the form variable doesn't exists, like for checkboxes that are unchecked, or pulldowns now selected, an error gets thrown, wanting each instance of a form variable to be checked for existence first. Not good with large tables or complex forms. So to fix it, instead of manually picking through and adding cfif isdefined's for each variable that may not be there, I used the form structures "FIELDNAMES" to pick out the columns that exist and assign them.



	
	
	
	
	
	
	//Initialize the CFC with the default properties values.
	this.eventid = 0;
	this.event = "";
	this.eventdesc = "";
	this.eventtime = "";
	this.displayme = "";

The results is a concise package that eliminates the need to re-evaluate each form field for existance.

Economy hits HHWD Clients

Tue, 24 Feb 2009 13:39:00 -0600

I sent out invoices today for services my company has provided. And this is the response I received back from one of my clients. (You know who you are....) Hmmmmmm......

CFCs When you must use explicit naming -- Frameworks Potential Gotcha

Thu, 19 Feb 2009 11:24:00 -0600

Since HHWD often uses test databases and testing areas for internal development servers, and online client sandboxes, we set up our application.cfc to refer to many items by reference. Instead of using

datasource='databasefoo'

We will have an application.cfc entry:


then in the CFC cfquery use

since the testing database and sandbox database aren't our production databases, we want to be able to quickly update just the application.cfc and have it point to the correct database without having to do  perform a find/replace across our site.

Similarly, We do the similar setups for CFCs. Since the testing server and sandboxes a different directory structure than our production area, we normally use:


and then refer to it in our code as:


This all works great .... EXCEPT when your framework/OO needs and wants an explicit reference. This would be cases where you are establishing a bean or using a returntype:

in DAOs:
 
You must enter the explicit returntype. Putting the #application.cfc# in the returntype field throws a generic 500 "Server busy or starting" error. Cryptic and not particularly useful in the measure. 

The same situation occurs when you declare a bean argument with the cfc as its type:


You must use the explicit reference here as well.

As you can tell, I just spent a few hours in the school of head-bangers figuring out the issue... after I did a sitewide replacement of all "datafoo.cfc." with "#application.cfc#".



Quick & Dirty -- Opening Editable Illustrator Vector Images  in Fireworks
Tue, 20 Jan 2009 08:57:00 -0600
I have created a Vector image in Illustrator that I want to open in FW CS3. FW CS3 doesn't integrate well with AI files, and EPS files usually import as bitmap.

To open a vector Illustrator file in Fireworks CS3, to this:

1) In Illustrator, save as .eps, then choose a legacy Illustrator 8 version.

2) In Fireworks, import that newly saved .eps file and you should import all the paths and and shape along with it. 

There may be some fine tuning involved, but at least you are not recreating the image


Better way to set Dynamic Directory References?
Thu, 15 Jan 2009 12:11:00 -0600
I have several projects set up in the following directory structure:



\        (contains index.cfm and application.cfc)
\cfc     (contains all CFCs)
\html    (contains all non home page files)
\images  
\includes
\config
(and so on)....


The application.cfc uses REQUEST variables to reference the page location to link to based on where the location is. This is not very good practice, but is an ancient holdover from CF5 when I first started in Coldfusion.

Here is an example:


 
  
  
  

   
   
  




Then I use the reference:


NavLink1


in my includes and pages to reference given page. 

There has got to be a better way  to skin this animal. While I am plowing through beans and configs, in the meantime I have several projects that I just want to perform some simple cleanup on.

Anyone got any better suggestions? The settings would need to change based on a page by page basis but aren't updated or reset by the user .

A