A few days ago I released the latest update to the HomePortals framework and its counterpart management platform ColdBricks. Besides the obligatory bug fixes and improvements, there was one new major feature on this release: the CMS Plugin. The CMS Plugin is a HomePortals extension to provide content management and site administration features to any HomePortals-based application without requiring the use of an external application (like ColdBricks) or building your own administration features.

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I just pushed new updated versions of HomePortals and ColdBricks to their respective sites and are now available for download. As usual the updates contain multiple bug fixes and small improvements here and there. However there are a couple of features that are worth mentioning.

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A while ago I wrote a post about how to integrate the HomePortals layout rendering features into an a ColdBox application. Since then a lot has changed on both the HomePortals and ColdBox camps so I've been wanting to revisit that experiment and see if it could be made in an easier way now, using the advances on both frameworks. Read on for the findings.

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A new update to ColdBricks CMS is now available for everyone to download and play. This is still part of the greater 1.1 release but it adds some new interesting features that I thought would be interesting to blog about. Besides the obligatory bug fixes/performance enhancements, the two most prominent features are Custom Resource Libraries and the completion of a full modular architecture, including the option to install/uninstall modules directly by the end user.

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I wanted to quickly share that two new ColdFusion websites have been launched recently: MSDynamicsWire.com (a news portal) and Meancycles Owners Galleries (a social network). Both sites were developed using HomePortals and ColdBricksCMS.

Both sites show different level of integration and customization, as each serves a very different function, but they are good examples of the wide range of solutions that can be obtained by combining the HomePortals framework with the ColdBricksCMS platform.

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One of the new features I really like on the new ColdBricks release is the Module Maker. This feature allows you to create your own customizable widgets or modules that you can add to your own ColdBricks sites.

To better demonstrate the capabilities of the Module Maker, I recorded a quick screen cast (using ScreenToaster) of how to quickly create a widget from Amazon and add it to a site.

Here is the video:

Cheers!

I am finally ready to enter the testing/packaging phase for the new version of ColdBricks. ColdBricks, if you don't know is a CF-based Content Management System (CMS) that is used to build sites on a modular fashion.

This new version includes some nice features such as:

- Template management (author and manage your own page templates and layouts) - Module maker (create and customize your own configurable modules/widgets) - Site monitor (monitor site, cache, and memory status of your sites from within ColdBricks) - Fully modular and extensible architecture (think 'custom plugins') - A new and more simpler page management format - Create your own catalog of resources to use in your site (great complement to the ModuleMaker) - Completely updated rendering engine (yes, that means HomePortals 3.1) - And more!

At this moment there is not an official distribution package, but if you want to play around with it (and help me test and/or provide feedback), here are the download links:

ColdBricks 1.1 (Beta)

Also you will need the new version of HomePortals: HomePortals 3.1

For both of these, just download and unzip on the root folder of your site, and go to http://your_domain/ColdBricks to get started.

Additionally some of the site templates in ColdBricks, like the StartPage and the Blog, require a couple of HomePortals plugins. Here are the links:

HomePortalsAccounts

HomePortalsModules

Again, just unzip on the root and thats it.

As for requirements, this version has been mostly developed on Railo 3, but was tested on CF 8.0.1. I did all my dev on a Windows machine, so if you test on a *nix or mac, let me know if you run into any upper/lowercase issue.

As always, documentation is still trailing behind (far behind), but i'll be happy to explain and even write some blog posts to clarify any doubt.

Feedback and bugs are **really** appreciated.

Cheers!

*** UPDATE: I updated the download links to point to the general downloads page for each project, rather than a specific release. From each download page, you may download the "Beta" version for each project.

To the couple of misguided souls that used to pay attention to my blog, you may have noticed that after an unfortunate db crash last year (resulting in loosing a couple of really interesting comment threads) I seemed to drop down from the face of the blogosphere and just abandoned completely my blog. Well, what really happened was that the last few months of 2008 and the beginning of 2009, have been pretty hectic in my life, sorta like a rollercoaster of life changes that took me (literally) from one corner of the country to the other.

First, I left a job I had had for a little more than four years to seek fame and fortune elsewhere. Working at Unique Vacations/Sandals Resorts was a very interesting experience; I made great friendships, learned from a master developer, and tried my hand at building/improving pretty interesting and high profile applications. But in the end I felt it was time for a change and that I had to move on. So I left Miami and headed north to Tampa.

In Tampa something extraordinary happened: our first child, Diego, was born. The experience of being a father for the first time is pretty unbelievable and way too much to put in words. We stayed in Tampa for a couple of months, while I worked for a little bit at a consulting/software company there. Then, with the turn of the new year, I was presented with an extraordinary opportunity to work together with some very smart people on a beautiful place called Oregon. So yep, at the beginning of the year, my wife, the baby and I, packed our things and flew cross-country to start a new life on the other corner of the country.

And so, here I am, living south of Portland, Oregon, surrounded by a beautiful scenery, working with a great team on challenging projects and technologies, and blessed with a wonderful baby and wife.

Finally, I already started working again in a couple of personal projects. Over the next few weeks, I'll post about some improvements for the next versions of HomePortals and ColdBricks to give an idea of where they stand, and hopefully get some feedback about them too.

Until then, have fun and code a lot.

*** THIS IS A REPOST OF AN EARLIER ARTICLE THAT GOT WIPED OUT ON A RECENT DB CRASH. ***

If you ever wanted to modify ColdBricks or BugLog, but didn't understood how these application were constructed; or if you just want to see yet another way of developing CF applications, then this post may be for you.

I just posted some pages describing the framework I use for developing CF projects. It doesn't even has a proper name, I just call it "Core" due to its simplicity and its minimalistic nature. The basic principle of this framework, and the reason why I choose to use it instead of going with more traditional offerings, is that it only focuses on one thing and one thing only: provide a formal mechanism for going from one page to another and for invoking actions.

It doesn't do any fancy things, no complex request lifecycles, no sophisticated caching, no extensive API, none; however, it does provide enough extension points to which I can hook any functionality that I desire on a per-project basis. Basically the framework consists on a Front Controller implementation, a base event handler and a few conventions for directory structure and nomenclature.

Anyway, you can find the code and read more about this framework by going to the Projects section or by going directly here.

I realize I'm a bit late posting this now, but better late than never :) Last week I had the opportunity to do a presentation about ColdBricks to the Inland Empire's ColdFusion User Group (IECFUG). I want to thank Luis and all the IECFUG guys for inviting me and enduring my bad english and my blatant lack of PowerPoint/speaker skills; but hopefully they got to see a bit of ColdBricks in action and got a better idea of what ColdBricks brings to the ColdFusion's CMS market.

Here is a link to the recorded Adobe Connect presentation; also attached to this post are the presentation slides in PDF form. Feel free to take a look as it may answer some ColdBricks/HomePortals questions some people may have.

Again, thank you guys for the opportunity!