I thought this would make a handy addition to the developer hosting so I asked the nice folks at Helicon if they would donate a copy and they said yes.
Note that this is only available on the new servers running WebsitePanel, it is not available on the old HELM system.

Helicon Ape provides support for Apache .htacces and .htpasswd configuration files in Microsoft IIS. It literally implements Apache configuration model and nearly all Apache modules in a single IIS add-on, not only making IIS compatible with Apache, but also extending it’s functionality by a number of highly essential features.
What this means is that if you have an .htaccess file from Apache then it should work here, or if you have some Apache mod_rewrite rules, you can use them on your site without any modification.

Includes following modules: mod_rewrite, mod_proxy, mod_auth, mod_gzip, mod_headers, mod_cache, mod_expires, mod_replace and others. You can check all currently available modules in the compatibility chart (the list is growing with new builds).

If you have an area of your website that you need to password protect, then .htaccess is the way to do it. Using ColdFusion will only secure .cfm files, so for a basic admin system it works fine, but if you have other resources/documents you need to secure such as pdf/images/word docs etc, then using a ColdFusion login system will not stop anyone accessing those files unless you deliver them via CFcontent.
.htaccess files can also be managed directly via CF, so you can still create and manage your users and groups within your CFML app and pass the authentication details to CF after login for more granular control within your application, such as controlling roles based permissions.

To enable APE simply login to WebsitePanel, select your website, click the ".htaccess" tab on the web site properties page, then click the enable button.

For more details on using APE please see the documentation. There are lots of good example son the site showing you how to do the common stuff. Remember that you will not have direct access to the server or the APE interface, so you will need to create and edit the .htaccess and other files by hand, or you can download the FREE edition APE locally in order to generate the files and then upload to your site.

In case you missed September's newsletter, HELM and the old developer hosting servers will be taken offline at the end of March 2012. After this date anything still on the old servers will be gone forever. So if you want to keep any of the data in your account please be sure to back it up and migrate it to the new systems ASAP. On the new control panel you have automated backup tools that will make this a lot easier.

If you have no idea what i'm talking about, then you probably did not get the newsletter for some reason or it ende dup in your junk email folder, in which case please rmemeber to add cfmldeveloepr.com to your whitelist/filters so that you receive future emails.

You can view the aforementioned newsletter HERE which explains how to migrate your data to the new systems.

Read more...

Mura CMS at the UK CFUG  in London - October 20th

Blue River's Grant Shepert will be presenting an overview of Mura CMS at the UK CFUG in London on October 20th. Grant will show how you can quickly create a full-featured website in Mura CMS while covering an overview of Mura CMS features, plugins & plugin development, creating & deploying site bundles, and more.

The doors open at 7:00 PM for a 7:30 start - don't miss this opportunity to catch up on the latest developments in Mura CMS. Also, attendees of this event will get a 25% discount on the upcoming UK Mura CMS training courses. Click here for more information. 

London Mura CMS training courses - November 14-18

Blue River will be offering London-based Mura CMS training November 14-18, 2011. These full-day training courses will provide you with in-depth understanding of how to get the most out of Mura CMS, from simple content updates all the way to creating new Mura CMS plug-ins.

We have 3 courses available, each tailored to the unique needs of your different team members.

Admin/User Training Course: In this one-day course, you will learn how to use Mura CMS's administration screens to build, configure and maintain your site. This course will include an overview of Mura CMS's functionality, with a focus on the tools and processes used during site creation and content updates.

Front-End Developer Training Course: In this two-day course, we will cover a wide range of front-end development. You'll get an in-depth understanding of how to create and modify Mura CMS templates and CSS to create your site's layouts and design, and how to use JavaScript to manipulate page elements dynamically. We will also show you how to rapidly build-out a site with common functionality by leveraging the built-in features of Mura.

Back-End Developer Training Course: In this two-day course, you will get a hands-on "deep dive" into Mura CMS. You'll learn the fundamental principles at work in Mura CMS, and how to programatically manipulate, extend and customize Mura CMS. We'll cover topics ranging from the accessing the Mura API to creating plugins, performance tuning and much, much more. This course will enable you to take full advantage of all that Mura CMS offers.

We'll be presenting this training at Adobe's London offices at 12 Regent Park. Many thanks to Adobe for their assistance and support of Mura CMS.

The next version of ColdFusion (10) is codenamed Zeus. Although it is still in development and most of the secrets are still under wraps, some sneak peaks were released at the recent RIACON.

Solr. In CF10 say goodbye to Verity and document limits. Solr is now the only search engine in CF10. It does basic searches with the tags, but if you dig into the power of SOLR using Java you can do much more.

Web Services are better than ever. Now they support Apache Axis2, which includes full REST support. Sorry SOAP, you are no longer the only service in town. And don’t forget, WSDL 2.0. But unlike a Java implementation of Axis, the engineers got Axis and Axis2 to run side by side – which means full backward compatibility.

Apache Tomcat is perhaps the most popular and anticipated change coming to CF 10. Adobe’s antiquated Java engine JRun is finally being put to rest. JRun never really became that popular, whereas Tomcat is the most popular servlet engine and has wide support in the Java community. And Adobe will be giving Tomcat it’s full support. Just putting a more robust, yet lightweight Java server in the mix will result in significant speed and reliability improvements. The file structure will look just like it did before. And the multi-instance and clustering tools are much, much better.

Schedule Task management was re-built from the ground up. Improvements include granular controllers such as: ranges, conditionals, triggers and chaining, priority, grouping, and much more! Schedule tasks can even be application specific.

Dynamic Java Class Loading will allow you to add java classes quickly and to specific applications without putting restarting servers and all that. Lets hope they consider security with this.

Closures are something we have seen in other languages, like jQuery. Simply put, they are anonymous functions that execute in caller context. In CF you can use closures in function arguments, function bodies, and as vars in CFSCRIPT. Advanced developers will love this new feature.

Security is not only improved in the app, but Adobe has supposedly taken a very serious stand on security. They have new security czar and a new head QA engineer whose responsibilities include ensuring the security of the CF product. Updates will be schedule quarterly to ensure a regular maintenance schedule and right from the server update tab. No more will you have to go to the Adobe site to find updates, in can be done all in the application. Multiple servers? Update all fixes across all servers with one click!
The security of ColdFusion has always been a bubear of mine, as a host it is frustrating when you cannot lock things down, and I have contributed quite a lot of feedback and advice in this area over the years, so lets hope they finally get it right this time.

Security improvements are slated to include:

• session fixation, CSRF protection, new functions
• password encryption, & enhanced security (sessions & cookies)
• new xss & CSRF functions
• new algorithms
• CF Admin is secure by default on install

I have now setup the new cfmldeveloper servers on our new cloud platform using our new hosting control panel (WebsitePanel).

If you would like to try out the new system then you can signup HERE. The £1 setup is currently waived while I am testing the new systems.
Only ColdFusion is currently supported, I am working on adding Railo support to the control panel.

Please report any issues you find on getSatisfaction by clicking the FEEDBACK button on this web site.

What's New

• SQL Server 2008 Express support added
• FREE plan now includes 2 sites
• now running on windows 2008 with IIS 7.5 which includes some great new features such as url rewriting which can all be configured via the web.config
• ability to backup/restore and truncate databases
• better file management via the CP and via FTP
• CFMAIL now requires you to supply your own mail server details for sending email.
  If you have a Gmail account then you can use this, otherwise feel free to signup for the cfmldeveloper Google apps account , which will allow you to relay up to 500 email per day.

It is not currently possible to create ColdFusion Data Sources via WebsitePanel, so you will need to open a support ticket for this. I am working on a web based tool to allow users to create DSN's, security sandboxes and RDS access.

Note that you must signup as a NEW user, you will not be able to use your existing HELM login