Last night I fixed my issues with emails being sent from CFSnippets.org. About a week ago, in the haste of my hosting fiasco (which I still need to do a proper blog post about) I quickly realized that I would also need to move my email as I moved my blog. I decided on Gmail for your domain (or Google Apps - or whatever it's called). So I made the switch and made sure my CF administrator pointed to the new SMTP server (as described here).

The one problem with doing this was that CFSnippets.org used the Email Actionpack that ships with Model-Glue which does not use the default server mail settings. No problem, I figured I'd just point it at the new server and all would be great. Well, not really. If you look at the Gmail settings page I link to above you'll notice that you must specify 'TLS' and/or 'SSL' when using Gmail's SMTP server - which I had done when configuring CF, but I wasn't sure how I'd handle this at the individual cfmail level. I had a quick chat with my buddy Brian Rinaldi who pointed out that cfmail has a few new attributes as of CF 8 - two of which were exactly what I needed. (For the record, the new attributes are useSSL, useTLS and priority).

So after a few mod's to the Email Actionpack, a quick loop over my Undelivr folder to change all the existing queued mails, a copy/paste from Undelivr to Spool and my email is back in business.

Thanks for your patience. If you've signed up for CFSnippets.org you should now have your verification email. Again, I apologize for the inconvenience!

Thanks to a quick email from Chris Jordan I realized that any emails being sent from CFSnippets.org in the last few days have not gone out (specifically the registration verfication emails). I do not have access to the server right now, but I'll get this squared away this evening and send those emails out as soon as it's fixed. I see that there are a few unverified (legit) users in the queue so please bear with me. If you've tried to use my contact page to tell me about this, well, those emails wouldn't have gone out either :) so please accept my apologies for this issue.

I'm thrilled to announce Snip-A-Thon 2007. The purpose of this contest is to encourage snippet submission by our users, increase our registered user base and promote the overall concept and usage of CFSnippets.org. Here is the low down:

Contest Rules

• Contest runs from October 3rd, 2007 until November 30th, 2007 at 11:59PM EST.
• You must be a registered user of CFSnippets.org to participate.
• You will receive one 'ticket' for every snippet that you submit to CFSnippets.org within the contest time frame.
• You will receive one 'ticket' for every verified blog post that you post which promotes the contest and links directly to this page.
• You will receive five 'tickets' for displaying the banner ad shown at the top of this page on your blog/site during the contest (must also link to this page and be verified).
• At the end of the contest period the top 'ticket' holders will be declared the winners.
• The 4 winners, beginning with the highest number of tickets, will select a prize from the list of prizes below.
• Two additional participants will be chosen at random (one each month) and will receive a copy of the ColdFusion 8 Web Application Construction Kit.
• WACK courtesy of Ben Forta
• Important! Blog posts and banner ads must be manually submitted and must be verified by me to receive credit! Please use the manual entry form here by clicking on 'Enter' at the top of the page.

• A 5 user license for Savvy Content Manager
• A copy of Fusion Reactor
• A copy of FusionDebug 2.0 Standard
• A one year subscription to Fusion Authority Quarterly Update
• Two participants will be chosen at random (one each month) and will receive a copy of the ColdFusion 8 Web Application Construction Kit.

This contest could not have happened without the support of the following sponsors:

Savvy Content Manager - ColdFusion CMS
Fusion Reactor
Fusion Authority Quarterly Update

Also a huge thank you to the following folks:

Ben Forta for donating two copies of the CF8 WACK to give away.
Ben Nadel for creating the super-cool banner ad!
Ryan Everhart for also creating a banner for me, even though I used Ben's (sorry EV!).

So that's it! Remember, the more you participate the better your chances of winning! See the contest page for full details.

I wanted to dedicate a specific post to the technology/framework that powers my new site CFSnippets.org. In case you haven't noticed just yet (and if you haven't noticed, shame on you, go create an account!), CFSnippets.org is powered by Model-Glue. This was my first full experience with the magic that is MG and I must say I'm hooked. It just all seemed to make sense - and it just 'worked'. I found myself thinking very little about 'what goes where' once I got comfortable with the framework and thinking more about the user experience and the overall flow and look and feel of the site. It's hard to fully explain just how cool it is to finally understand and be able to develop a full application within a framework. My learning curve was a bit steeper seeing as how I decided to also take the time to fully soak up OO design patterns and put them into practice with this site. The end result is something that I'm really proud of - and for once the site is not something that I dread going back into to make a minor change or add a bit of functionality. I know exactly where to go to change/fix something and that's a feeling that I like a whole lot! I'm not completely sold on what my next full blown MG project will be - but I know there will be another one. I still metally waiver on those 'smaller' projects and whether or not the end result will be 'worth' using MG. I know that sounds silly - and again - I can't really explain why I feel that way since it's so darned easy to work with.

So about that user experience that I spoke of earlier. Bits and pieces of the site make use of ColdFusion 8's Ajax features. For example, when you're logged in and viewing libraries you may notice a 'Subscribe' option underneath each library that you can use to subscribe and create your own custom feed. I thought it would be nice to allow you to do this without a page reload so when the link is clicked, an Ajax request is submitted to update your subscription and the link fades out and is replaced by the 'Unsub' link. Subtle, but still pretty cool if you ask me. I also am using <cfwindow> on the site to display the code view of each snippet that you see as you browse a given library. Another small touch that seems to work out nicely.

The initial reaction to the launch has seemed very positive and I'm hoping that the momentum keeps up. I really feel that this can become a valuable asset to the ColdFusion community. If you have any ideas for the site please feel free to let me know.

I'm proud to announce the launch of my latest project, cfsnippets.org. The site is the first public SnipEx repository open to all snippet types for CFEclipse. If you're not familiar with Snippets in Eclipse, they're basically simple chunks of code - typically repetitive type tasks - that you can quickly and easily insert into your code by point/click or keyboard shortcut combinations. Jared Rypka-Hauer has already started a library on the site - check it out to get a feeling for how the site works. If you have snippets to add just register, verify your account and start adding snippets to the existing library or create your own. To use the SnipEx repository, click on 'SnipEx Server(s)' and copy the URL shown on that page and paste it into CFEclipse. For more on how to set that up see this post from Mark Drew.

As the site grows you may find there are a handfull of libraries that you use more then others. No problem, you'll be given the option to subscribe to individual libraries and customize your feed. A second URL will be presented to you (of course only when you're logged in) that contains only the libararies that you've subscribed to.

Currently you must manually delete your SnipEx cache in Eclipse to see new snippets as they're updated. Be sure to check the FAQ for a link that explains how to do this.

Note: Thanks to Jim Priest for reminding me that Raymond Camden also has a public SnipEx server. The main difference being that Ray's server strictly serves up the UDF's hosted at CFLib while this server is open to any snippet.