OscarArevalo.com - ColdBricks

Introducing the New HomePortals CMS Plugin

Mon, 01 Mar 2010 00:09:00 -0500

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. [More]

Available Update for HomePortals and ColdBricks

Wed, 24 Feb 2010 17:35:00 -0500

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. [More]

HomePortals/ColdBox Integration Revisited

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 14:50:00 -0500

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. [More]

ColdBricks 1.1 Update: Custom Resource Libraries & Extension Modules

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 17:57:00 -0500

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. [More]

Launched 2 New Homeportals/ColdBricks powered Websites

Thu, 01 Oct 2009 01:59:00 -0500

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. [More]

ColdBricksCMS - ModuleMaker Demo Screencast

Fri, 26 Jun 2009 05:04:00 -0500

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:

Record your screencast online

Cheers!

Anyone wants to help test the new ColdBricks CMS?

Wed, 24 Jun 2009 15:26:00 -0500

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.

Back to blogging

Mon, 16 Mar 2009 03:27:00 -0500

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.

A Peek Inside the Software Factory: Core Framework

Tue, 29 Jul 2008 00:11:00 -0500

*** 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.

IECFUG Introduction To ColdBricks Presentation

Fri, 13 Jun 2008 19:09:00 -0500

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!

ColdBricks Update and Documentation

Tue, 20 May 2008 14:45:00 -0500

New updated versions of ColdBricks and HomePortals are now available for download. ColdBricks 1.0.377: - Fixed issues with case-sensitive OSes - Fixed compatibility issues with BlueDragon - Added option to edit current skin from the Page Editor screen - Added option to create a Skin resource based on a page's local stylesheet - Fixed minor bugs HomePortals 3.0.189: - Added support for BlueDragon and OpenBlueDragon - Added support for case-sensitive operating systems Also, the ColdBricks User's Guide is now finished and ready for download. You can download the new ColdBricks release and the user's guide from the Downloads area in the ColdBricks site. If you want to get the new HomePortals release by itself, you can get it from the HomePortals site. Enjoy!

ColdBricks 1.0 Documentation

Sun, 11 May 2008 02:28:00 -0500

Well, its been an interesting few days after the release of ColdBricks. I am happy to see that it has generated a certain amount of interest in the ColdFusion community, and for what I've seen there was a definite desire to see more open source CMS solutions - I just say the more the better! One of the main problems that people have pointed out in these days is the blatant lack of documentation for both HomePortals and ColdBricks. And they are right!! both projects can look a bit daunting without knowing what is what and where is everything. I've spent the last several months slaving myself over the code and really didn't had the time to focus on the documentation side. So now that the code for both projects is out in the wild I have tried to put a little bit of extra effort to produce at least 'some' documentation. Thus, the first draft of the ColdBricks User's Guide is now available for download. This draft only contains the first three chapters of the entire guide. The chapters included are: 1. Overview 2. General Information 3. Getting Started However this chapters provide a general overview of ColdBricks, its relation with HomePortals, how everything is organized and some quick reference guides on how to get to each part of the application. This is a very early release and may very well have some typos and other bugs that need to be fixed, but I wanted to have something out quick for anyone that wanted to get their feet wet with ColdBricks. On the next few days I will continue working on the remaining chapters and publish the Guide when is ready. The users guide can be obtained from the downloads area from the ColdBricks website. In the meantime just play with it and have fun!

ColdBricks 1.0

Wed, 07 May 2008 14:17:00 -0500

So it's official, my new venture is now live and open to the public. ColdBricks is a free and open source content management system specially tailored for highly modular websites like portals and dashboards. The current version runs on ColdFusion 7, 8 and Railo 2 (still having problems with BlueDragon though). [More]

HomePortals 3 Portal Framework

Thu, 10 Apr 2008 01:10:00 -0500

Well, after several years of going back and forth with this project, I finally decided to share it with everyone and release my little baby as an open source project. HomePortals is a framework or platform for creating and running portals in ColdFusion. Most of the features in HomePortals focus around modularity, reusability of visual components, and personalization. Besides providing the framework, conventions and APIs for creating the sites, HomePortals also acts as a 'runtime' or 'rendering' engine. All pages in a HomePortals application are actually XML documents that describe the elements and modules to display as well as their layout and arrangement. The HomePortals engine is responsible for reading, parsing and rendering the actual pages based on the specifications of the given XML documents. This is a little bit like MXML in Flex, but in ColdFusion. I have succesfully tested HomePortals in ColdFusion MX 7, ColdFusion 8 and Railo 2. I have not yet had the chance to try it out in BlueDragon. I created a small site for this project, where you can download the framework, a sample application and find some documentation. The URL for the site is http://www.homeportals.net HomePortals has an LGPL license, which means that the library itself has to remain open source and any changes have to be shared, but it can also be used by non open source applications as an external library or component of the application. If someone wants to try HomePortals out I'd really like to hear some feedback. Another related project I will be releasing soon is ColdBricks... but I'll talk about that some other time :)

Sneak Peek: ColdBricks

Thu, 28 Feb 2008 21:11:00 -0500

Well, I think is time for a first sneak peak of a project I've been working on for the last few months. The project name is "ColdBricks" and is basically a cross between a Website generation app and a CMS. Here is a screen cast of myself using ColdBricks to create a simple "Start Page" application. If you don't hear any sound, don't worry, I didn't had a mic at hand; but I guess the video explains itself. Basically I log into the application, create a new site, open the site to mess around with some of the editing features of ColdBricks and then launch the site. Stay tuned for more ColdBricks info in the following weeks...