Nashville ColdFusion User Group

After Five Years We Have a New Site!!

10/16/08 11:21 PM

I am completely, unbelievably, indubitably, fantastically excited to announce and SHOW you the brand-spanking new Nashville ColdFusion User Group Web site!!

Launching a new Web site has been "in the works" in one way or another for over two years. Not long after I took over the group from Tony Bradshaw (January 2005) we all decided it was time for a new Web site and thus started a journey that took much longer than anyone anticipated. In some ways it's embarrassing how we didn't buckle down and just get the job done. But when I think of all the things that have taken place over the last three years, from the babies, job changes, contract and consultant work many of us do etc., I'm not too surprised. And after spending most of my waking hours over the last week working on the new site with J.J., I'm even less surprised.

Nevertheless, it's here and I'm very pleased with the results. The look and feel of the site are quite nice (in my opinion) but so are the features. We're using the Captial Hill User Group (CHUG) application originally built by Matt Woodward. The application is open source and built on top of ColdFusion, Mach-ii, and ColdSpring. What more could you ask for from a group of ColdFusion fanatics? The CHUG app is pretty good out of the box, but we've made some strong enhancements to it's functionality and have built it on top of the latest Mach-ii version (1.6.x beta) and ColdFusion 8 Enterprise. What else has changed? We've moved from CFDynamics, a hosting company that has served us very well for the last three years, to a Virtual Private Server hosted at Viviotech. The site now runs on top of CentOS Linux, Apache 2, and of course ColdFusion 8 Enterprise. The flexibility, control, and management features we have through a VPS mean the sky is limit in how we progress the site.

Today, we're rolling the site out with a set of basic user group management features, many of which are built right into CHUG. Meetings are databased and tied to specific meeting locations we manage, and there's an RSVP system for members. Gone are the days of sending RSVP e-mails! There's a News section for posting things such as this site announcement, an Articles section for blog-like postings, a Board page for listing user group leaders, and a Contact Us page so folks can get in touch with us easily. There are a dozen or so other features built-in to CHUG that we almost have complete and ready for release too. If that weren't enough, we architecting our own features into CHUG such as blog aggregation, member bios/photos, sponsors page, and a ColdFusion resources page. All of these features have been started code-wise or are documented in a Google doc shared between user leaders.

What's next for us? In addition to a new Web site and all the content and features it contains, we've created a few new events to help promote the user group and the Nashville Internet community, as well as create more opportunities for social interaction among members. We're kicking off the first of these events, a CF_LUNCH, this month at Blackstone. Next month, we're all meeting up for some CF_BEER at "the saucer" (Flying Saucer). Both events should be loads of fun and I encourage everyone to RSVP on the Meetings page. With these new events rotating every other month and the official monthly meeting, you have two opportunities to get involved each month. So get off your couch, put down the bon-bon's and remote, and come out to these events to meet other developers and further your own career!

I want to say what a privilege and and honor it has been to serve you and the ColdFusion/Internet community in Nashville for the last three years. I'm so thankful for the familiar faces at each monthly event and the new faces that show up from time to time. We have a great user group and I'm looking forward to the future!

Lastly, huge kudos are due Tony Bradshaw and company for setting up our old site that served us well for such a long time. Thanks also to CFDynamics for hosting our site for the last three years and for Jim Rising for hosting it before that. To Andy and Cutter for smacking me around and motivating me to keep working on the site, thanks. To J.J., dude, you rock! You sparked the development flame when you downloaded the CHUG app and now it's a raging fire. Thanks for volunteering for the assistant manager role and for being so instrumental in the success of this group.

To everyone else, I'll see you at the next event!

Cheers!

posted by Aaron West

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