Since the end of the CF.Objective() 2006 conference I have been asked to give my presentation on FarCry 3.0 at a few different locations for different clients/events (one of which I volunteered for). Now that I've done the presentation several times I have decided to make a video representation of it.

Since the presentation on average is just short of an hour long I decided to break the video up into four parts for easier web distribution. This morning I completed editing the first part and you can get it from the tutorials section of the website.

Part 1 describes a little background on FarCry, topic headings that will be discussed in the presentation, FarCry's minimum requirements for installation, and a few other details. The presentation then goes into an installation demonstration using Apache on Windows (my development laptop).

Parts 2-4 will show examples of a general site configuration, a brief description of user security, and then will go into content examples (from static content like HTML pages, to dynamic content like News and Categories). I then show some examples of how to use containers, includes, custom types, verity search integration, RSS/XML content syndication, SES Friendly URLs, and more. So, keep an eye out in the next week or two for parts 2-4.

I have also provided the slides from my presentation (slightly updated). You can download them in either powerpoint (PPT) or PDF format. You can find a copy of the presentation files in the downloads section of my website.

The ColdFusion Weekly podcast aired for the first time last week and so far it has been a hit. This week in episode 2 (or version 1.1 as it's called on their site) has a lot of great topics and discussions as the podcast develops into a great listening experience for ColdFusion developers. My interview was conducted at the ColdFusion conference CF.Objective() (see photo to the right) and the topic of our discussion revolved around the presentation I was giving on FarCry 3.0.

Make sure to download the podcast and check it out. You can find more details are on their website as well as links to many feeds for different podcast players (such as iTunes).

Later this morning I will release my presentation slides from the conference as well as a video representation of the session called FarCry 3.0 - An Overview. It will be a Part 1 of a four-part series aimed at developers looking into FarCry as a possible soltion for content management. Keep an eye out for that soon.

Next week ColdFusion Weekly will be airing the first episode of their ColdFusion podcast. They've been doing a lot of work behind the scenes and recording a lot of interviews to make sure that they have a lineup of regular episodes ready to air while they can prepare more material for future episodes.

Next week will be the first episode. I have been informed that their interview with me at the CF.Objective() conference last week will be in episode 1. The interview was based on the session I gave FarCry 3.0: CMS in the Real World.

They decided to interview me during a break at the event. Unfortunately we had to stop/start in the middle of the interview due to a few interruptions (it was kind of funny). I'm curious to see how they splice the interruptions together into a seamless interview :).

Update: My interview has been moved to a later date (don't worry, its for a good reason :) ).

Well, I'm shutting down my system for the night and leaving for CF.Objective() early tomorrow morning.

If you're going to the conference and you see me there, make sure to say Hi. My plane arrives around 1:30pm, so I'll likely be at the hotel by 2:30pm. And make sure to check out my session (FarCry 3.0 - CMS in the Real World) at 2:30pm on Sunday.

I see this question again and again, "How can I get the latest bleeding edge release of Farcry CMS?"

Many people don't have access to using a CVS client, don't know how to use one, or just don't want to. Well, now you can download the Farcry CMS nightly builds from my website.

The system checks the CVS server daily at 5:00 AM EST. If new file(s) exist the server gets them and adds them to the zip file. If no new files exist, it leaves the ZIP file alone. So you can just check the file date (shown on the website) to see if a newer version exists.

Please note that these are not officially released by Daemon as stable releases and you use them at your own risk. As always, if you are using these files to upgrade over an existing version of Farcry make sure to backup your database and farcry files first.

Download page

Last month I mentioned a website award I received for a website I worked on earlier this year (Middlesex Hospital). Well that website has once again won an award.

This time the award is from Strategic Health Care Communications (SHCC) in the category of Best Site Design.

A couple weeks ago I was notified that a site I worked on earlier this year (Middlesex Hospital) took home a WebAward for "Outstanding Website".

A special thanks goes out to Aaron Gustafson for the majority of the styling and graphic design work.

Unfortunately my name is misspelled on the award, but I'm just happy to see the site win. It is always gratifying to see something you've worked on for so long (8+ months) get some appreciation.

The CMS used for the site is Farcry CMS.

Please join me on May 19, 2005 at the Hartford ColdFusion User Group where I will be giving a presentation on the ColdFusion open source CMS product Farcry.

I will be demonstrating some of its main features, where you can find it, and how simple it is to install and configure within minutes. Out-of-the-box it’s ready to start demonstrating itself as a fully function content management system for content-rich websites.

I will also show how easy it is to extend the core product to include some of your existing website applications so that developers will see that they don't have to give up their existing ColdFusion applications and databases in order to move their site over to a Farcry website.

On a recent site I worked on (www.middlesexhospital.org) one of the requirements was to take the body from dynamic content pages and make an unordered list of anchored links pointing to the <h*> heading tags on the page.

So given the body, how do we create the unordered list dynamically? Also, I don't want to make my users have to know how to set id attributes in <h*> heading tags (especially if they are using a WYSIWYG editor such as FCKEditor or htmlArea to edit their content).

Read more in this tutorial.