The ACME Guide is a fantastic document created by Stephen Collins, which lays out in easy to understand steps, how to set up and configure Apache, ColdFusion, MySQL and Eclipse on your local Mac or PC.

Unfortunately the document has been dormant for a while (only covering up to ColdFusion 7).

However, after speaking with Stephen, we've got approval to take over the job of maintaining the guide. And we're absolutely delighted.

We'll be honouring all of Stephen's hard work, but since the documents last update, a lot of things have changed, including:

* We're now on ColdFusion 9 * We have established alternative CFML engines in OpenBD and Railo * CFEclipse has been updated * ColdFusion Builder has been released

As such, we want to incorporate as much as we can into this document and therefore we'd like your suggestions.

What do YOU want to see in the guide? Leave a comment or Contact Us

The current version of the guide can be downloaded from http://www.acidlabs.org/public-speaking/goodies/

Fuzzy Orange are excited to announce a fantastic offer we will be running between April and May 2010.

If you purchase a copy of ColdFusion 9 Enterprise through Fuzzy Orange during this period, you will receive a copy of ColdFusion Builder at no extra cost.

ColdFusion Builder, the CF-specific development platform, is the perfect companion for ColdFusion developers, and has been created to help maximise the development workflow, increase productivity and improve integration with the ColdFusion servers. As such, it's ideally suited to be bundled in this package with ColdFusion Enterprise.

Please find below the price brackets for the CF 9 Enterprise licenses:

• ColdFusion 9 Enterprise Full License - £3,300.00 + vat
• ColdFusion 9 Enterprise Upgrade (from CF7/8 Ent) - £1700.00 + vat
• ColdFusion 9 Enterprise Upgrade (from CF7/8 Standard) - £3,000.00 + vat
• ColdFusion 9 Enterprise Upgrade (from CF9 Standard) - £2600.00 + vat

You will receive one ColdFusion Builder license for every copy of ColdFusion Enterprise purchased.

Licenses can also be purchased with maintenance or Platinum support. Contact Us for more details or to place an order.

This offer expires May 31st, so don't hesitate and get your copy now.

There's been a lot of posts about ColdFusion Builder since it's release, and a lot to do with functionality and features.

What I'd like to do is address pricing and licensing. Some of this information will be applicable only to the UK, as that's where we are based, although for those in Western Europe we can also sell the product to you.

So, as an Adobe Authorised Reseller, we need to know the ins and outs of the licensing for the Adobe products. To be honest, we only care about ColdFusion, and now ColdFusion Builder and Flash Builder.

We've detailed a lot of information on our Reseller page, but hopefully this blog post gives you the opportunity to leave comments and questions.

So, let's get started.

ColdFusion Builder Editions

There are three editions of ColdFusion Builder:

• Trial
• Commercial
• Education

Let's deal with each one individually.

Trial

ColdFusion Builder has a free 60 day trial edition, which can be downloaded from http://www.adobe.com/go/trycoldfusionbuilder

We've seen a lot of debate over the last day about product pricing and we just want to emphasise that the trial edition exists and that it lasts for 60 days.

Commercial

ColdFusion Builder retails in the UK for £171+vat. Also included in the price is a complimentary copy of Flash Builder 4 Standard.

ColdFusion Builder is also bundled with Flash Builder 4 Premium, which has a Suggested Retail Price (SRP) of £397+vat.

In regards upgrades, there is obviously no upgrade available for ColdFusion Builder, but you can upgrade to Flash Builder 4 Premium from:

• Flex Builder 2/3
• Flash Builder 4 Standard
• ColdFusion Builder

Pricing obviously varies depending on the upgrade path.

Also, one little bit of information that's not been clearly publicised is the fact that your ColdFusion Builder license can be installed on a maximum of 2 computers, e.g. your desktop and your laptop. This is great new for those who half to do a lot of traveling.

As a Reseller we can always offer a better price than the SRP, so please Contact Us for more information.

Education

Just like ColdFusion Server, ColdFusion Builder is available at no cost to Educational facilities. To make sure you qualify, head over to https://freeriatools.adobe.com/cfbuilder/.

And that's all there is to it. If you do have any questions or comments, please leave them here on the blog or Contact Us directly.

Two in a week. We are on a roll.

Fuzzy Orange are (once more) proud to launch a new open-source project to the community.

Codenamed 'Hermes', the messenger of the gods and, amongst other things, God of flight, mischief and commerce, this project is a package of ColdFusion components providing instant access to interact with the Eventbrite Service API.

Fuzzy Orange have used the Eventbrite system for a few years now as a tool to manage, organise and sell our tickets for the Scotch on the Rocks conferences.

Hermes is ideally suited for anyone wanting an easy way to manage events and tickets through the Eventbrite system, and is perfectly suited for integration into CRM systems. You can easily obtain reports on event attendees, manage tickets and pricing structures, and specify venues, organisations and donation options.

The download contains an installation guide and documentation on the basic implementation of the code, as well as a list of the methods currently available to users to work with the API.

We will be working on upgrades and amendments to the code base to ensure you continue get the best application available. As always. feedback is always welcome, and if you use the codebase, drop us a line to let us know - we'd love to hear from you.

Hermes V1.0 is available to download now from RIA Forge: http://hermes.riaforge.org/.

Fuzzy Orange are proud to launch a new open-source project to the community.

Codenamed 'Rhea', after the mother of the Olympian Gods and Godesses, this project is a package of ColdFusion components providing instant access to interact with the Rackspace Cloud Servers and Cloud Files APIs.

We at Fuzzy Orange, a longstanding partner with Rackspace and user of the Cloud services, wanted a way to simplify the way we deployed to the Cloud server and provide an easier in-house method of managing the Cloud Files.

Having spoken to developers and after reading documentation, we noticed the need for a ColdFusion application to merge with the Rackspace API, and as such, Rhea was born.

Having built the system from the ground up, we now use this API internally to deploy dynamic content to our Cloud Servers and to upload and manage static content to the Cloud Files containers, streamlining and enhancing the way we work.

We have opened up the application and pushed it out to the community so that others can benefit as well, and we look forward to hearing from those that are using it.

The download itself contains an installation guide and documentation on the basic implementation of the code, as well as a list of the methods currently available to users to work with the API.

As ever, nothing is timeless, and we will be working on upgrades and amendments to the code base to ensure you continue get the best application available.

Rhea V0.99 is available to download now from RIA Forge: http://rhea.riaforge.org/

Being a ColdFusion company, we obviously like to stay as up to date as we can with the product, and we upgraded to ColdFusion 9 on the day it was released (the upgrade was actually performed whilst attending Adobe MAX).

Since it's release, we've also become a Rackspace partner, which was primarily due to the relationship we have built up with their team as part of a co-support agreement we have with one of our largest clients.

With this new partnership it made sense for us to move our platform to Rackspace from our existing hosting company. Additionally, with ColdFusion 9 being the first version to officially support the Cloud, we decided to migrate to Rackspace's cloud platform.

Rackspace have a number of options for the Cloud, including Cloud Sites and Cloud Servers (in addition to Cloud files, which to simplify things, is for storage purposes).

Cloud Sites is a "load and go" solution, whereby you upload your site, and it automatically scales by default. So if demand increases, you can set your account to automatically handle growth, at a cost of course.

Starting at $100 a month, this will get you either a Linux or Windows hosting account with enough oomph to get you going. Should you require additional power, you can pay for what extra you need. Full pricing can be found http://www.rackspacecloud.com/cloud_hosting_products/sites/pricing

At this time, Cloud Sites do not support any kind of Java technology, which includes ColdFusion (although hopefully this will change soon). However, that's where Cloud Servers come in.

If you've used virtualisation software such as VMware them just think of Cloud Servers as the same thing, only instead of paying a normal hosting fee, the price you pay for your server depends on how much memory you want, starting from 512mb and going up to 16GB.

Right now, only Linux is supported with Cloud Servers, though Rackspace currently have Windows servers in beta.

As we're a Linux shop, we just needed to choose which distribution we wanted. Rackspace currently offer:

• CentOS 5.2
• CentOS 5.3
• Gentoo 2008.0
• Debian 5.0
• Fedora 10
• Arch 2007.08
• Ubuntu 8.04 LTS
• Ubuntu 8.10
• Ubuntu 9.10
• Red Hat EL 5.3

Out of those distributions, the only one you have to pay extra for is Red Hat.

In regards official support from Adobe, only Red Hat is covered (Adobe support Ubuntu 9.04 but that's not available as an option). However, we've been running ColdFusion on CentOS (and previously Fedora) for a long time and we've never had an issue.

So our flavour of choice is CentOS 5.3, which we then upgraded to 5.4.

For memory we chose 2GB. Normally we'd run with more, but Rackspace only support full image backups (at this time) on Cloud Servers with up to 2GB of memory. Support for all memory sizes is coming soon.

So, for the servers that are business critical to us, we have pitched for the 2GB versions. For other servers, where a full image backup isn't as important, we've pitched for 4GB.

We can easily increase the memory allocation in the Cloud Management Portal, simply by choosing an increased amount of memory, and we'll do so when the additional backup support goes live.

Building the Server

Once you've picked your memory allocation, your operating system and provided your credit card details, you're transferred into the Rackspace Cloud Management system, where you can watch the progress of your server build. It maybe took a minute or two for the system to build our servers.

Once your server is built, you'll be provided with the root username/password to log in and configure your server. From this point on, it's just like managing any Linux based ColdFusion server.

You get your firewall up and running, lock it down, block remote root logins, etc, etc.

Next, you install ColdFusion.

So in about 20 minutes, we had a Rackspace Cloud server running ColdFusion.

We've moved our servers to the cloud, using Rackspace, who are also our new hosting partner.

We're also running CF9 Enterprise, which is the first version to be officially supported in the Cloud, so it's a perfect match

Something we discovered lately, which we reported to Adobe, is that if you perform an EAR/WAR install of ColdFusion 9, and choose RDS to be disabled, the installer enables it regardless.

Adobe have issued a technote here.

Matt and myself wrote an article for the November edition of .NET mag, and we've also been speaking about this new ColdFusion 9 feature across Europe as part of Scotch on the Road.

To follow up on this, Matt has started on a series of blog posts on ColdFusion as a Service, and you can read part one here.