This is a minor update, the main update is a fix to stats.cfm and SQL Server support. Enjoy.
Release Notes:
Locale files for DE, CH, AT by Mischa Sameli
/stats.cfm - various SQL Server fixes
/admin/settings.cfm - suggestion by Forta to sort tb spam list
/admin/entry.cfm - fix the image upload url
/org/camden/blog/blog.cfc - version
/org/camden/blog/blog.ini - the trackback spam list is sorted, but not different
BlogCFC 5.9.3.005 was released to the RIAForge project. This includes an important update to SweetTweets support. You may have noticed the first hit on a blog entry with SweetTweets enabled was super slow. This made sense due to the number of HTTP calls being made to fetch data. SweetTweets has nice caching support, but the end result was that your blog entries would be slow as heck on the first hit.
I've made a simple, but effective change. jQuery is now used to load the SweetTweet contents. This makes the blog entry load immediately and the SweetTweet links will load in a few seconds. I'm still using the cache, so on the 2nd-N hit, the information will load so quick folks won't notice the Ajax.
I hope this helps. A few other changes were made as well.
A very large update was released tonight, thanks to Dan G. Switzer. There are quite a few changes, all described in the readme, so I'll hit up some of the bigger ones to explain why I went ahead and bumped up the version to 5.9.3.
Lots of good little nuggets. Thanks Dan!
I know it's been a long time since my last release (sorry!), but I just released 5.9.2.005 to RIAForge. I've also included a copy here as one reader had issues downloading the code.
This release has support for Tweetbacks, or Twitter trackbacks, a very cool feature that makes use of SweetTweets (http://sweettweets.riaforge.org) from Adam Tuttle. I'm a tiny bit concerned about the delay getting the data. It isn't too bad at all, maybe 2 seconds or so, and cached, but I may look at improving the performance with BlogCFC a bit. For example, I may do the hit using cfthread under CF8. So the first hit would fire off the process to get the data, but you wouldn't see it ON the page until the data is ready. Yeah, the more I think about it, the more I kinda like that approach.
That being said though - folks - give it a try and let me know what you think.
p.s. The readme forgets to mention it, and thanks to Jeff Coughlin for pointing out, you need to copy org/sweettweets to your server.
Thanks to Matt Woodward for finding another issue under OpenBlueDragon. I've just released a minor update that corrects an issue when no blog entries exist. It did not throw an error under Adobe ColdFusion, but, it is a fix that makes sense in general, and may have been exposed in other circumstances as well. In other words, get it. It's a one line change to getEntries, which as you guys know, I heavily modified in the previous version for performance reasons.
New topic: BlogCFC6. I spent a lot of time working on skins for BlogCFC6. I actually got it working... but it was hellishly complex code. The skins weren't, just the code behind it. My objective had been: "Thou shall not see CFML in skins." And I got that working. But... the more I think about it, the more I think it was overkill.
What I'm thinking of now is a skin solution that works with custom tags. So for example, to display an entry, it runs a custom tag and the attributes are passed to it. Layout - ditto. So this means there will be CFML involved, but - and this is the kicker for me - BlogCFC will use a 'contract' with the custom tags. By that I mean, when you design the Entry custom tag, for example, you will know that you will ALWAYS get certain attributes passed in. This means that you can upgrade w/o worry. So let's say I add the Cowbell feature to the blog. Cowbell could be passed as an argument to your (your being your skin) custom tag, and since you don't use it, your skin won't throw an error.
Does that make sense? I'm thinking this could greatly simplify things. I'm also thinking of XML definitions for skins that make it easier to modify w/o making a whole new skin. Kind of like skin arguments.
So imagine some skin called X, made by a great designer. He wants to have a few different versions of the skin, where 100% of the code is the same, but the CSS is _slightly_ different. The XML definition of the skin could point to one CSS, and if I wanted to use the 'varient', I simply edit the XML to point to the other CSS.
That's probably not greatly defined above, but I think you get the idea.
Comments welcome.
FYI - upcoming BlogCFC 5 changes. Andrew Scott found some issues with XML-RPC (my favorite feature, ahem) that will go into the next build. I also plan on getting Twitbacks in soon. Now that I'm a heavy Twitter user I'd love to see this added to BlogCFC.
Just released a minor update. It hits a few OpenBlueDragon issues and adds a major performance boost to getEntries(). The modification probably won't be noticeable until you get a significant amount of blog entries.
The BlogCFC Team is working hard on some major upgrades. Before any software updates can be made we need to redo the main website. We have been working hard on getting this ready and it is pretty close to being completed. One thing that could really help us out is a nice testimonial from any users out there. Just a short blurb in the comments on why you use it and why you love it. Please leave your name, your comments and a link if you want. Thanks for helping us out and stay tuned for some exciting things to come.
I wanted to see some stats based on the past year, so I recently built a script up for my blog:
I've included the CFM as an attachment to this blog entry. Note - I simply copied stats.cfm from my blog, and my blog is rather old (5.8 ort so).
p.s. I should add - the code is dynamic of course. It will use the current year. I should maybe set it up so that you can pass in a year as a URL variable so you can do some comparisons.
I'm feeling lazy so I'm just going to post the release notes. I'm a bit surprised no one noticed that the 'just subscribe' feature was totally fubared. The link wasn't checked in. Anyway, hopefully folks will update to 5.9.2!
/install/accessblog.mdb - typo fix by David Brown
/org/camden/blog/blog.ini.cfm - property 'usecfp' - You must add this to your ini file. If true, uses CFFORMPROTECT (cfformprotect.riaforge.org)
/org/camden/blog/blog.cfc - Version, getComments supports filtering, blogNow marked private
/client/index.cfm - Did I somehow forget to check in the code that shows links for subscribing to a blog entry?
/client/googlesitemap.cfm - Now includes pages. Thanks to Edward Beckett
/client/Application.cfm - store useCFP in App scope
/client/includes/style.css - mods as described by http://rickosborne.org/blog/index.php/2008/12/05/blogcfc-users-stop-or-youll-go-blind/
/client/includes/layout.css - mods as described by http://rickosborne.org/blog/index.php/2008/12/05/blogcfc-users-stop-or-youll-go-blind/
/client/cfformprotect - cfformprotect code
/client/admin/comments.cfm - Simple filtering
/client/admin/notify.cfm - Fixes a bug with entry notifications
/client/addcomment.cfm - cfformprotect
So after spending way too much time fighting XML-RPC, I've decided I just don't want to deal with it. Unfortunately, I know some of my users love it. Dan Switzer sent in some interesting XML-RPC mods. I've checked these into source control. If folks who use XML-RPC can test it, I'd greatly appreciate it. You can find details of his changes here:
My BlogCFC mods for Windows Live Writer
If I can get a few of you guys to A-OK it, I'll make it part of the official zip.
