I have actually been looking for a CFMX7 Cookbook. I like seeing snippets of code not only to solve certain problems but also to spark ideas and my imagination. Or even a Coldfusion Hacks type of thing like the OReilly books offer. So in answer, my vote is yes. A series of contests or posts is a great idea. I know I would actively participate!

Ray, you may even want to think about putting the ebook/book on http://www.spiderworks.com/

Absolutely! I'd be happy to contribute.

Ray,

Without a doubt! One of my big complaints as a relative newcomer to CF is that most books show you what can be done, but not necessarily the "right" way to do things and why.

I think its a great idea. Personally speaking, I'd like to see samples of the various OO design patterns in action: DAOs, DGs, etc, as well as examples how a given problem might be solved using different frameworks.

And if the opportunity presented itself I'd be willing to contribute as well.

One side comment on this. One cool thing about the Blog format is - I can say, this is how you would do X, and then my readers can offer alternatives. Folks will have... well, I will certainly NOT say the best, but will have one main opinion (mine) and then N other opinions on each task.

Ray, do it. Really. And consider e-publishing it, too.

Well, I'd love to publish it Ben, if only CF provided a way to generate PDFs. (Oh wait.... ;)

I think I have several chapters from the "ColdFusion Cookbook" Jeremy Petersen and I started writing a few years back for O'Reilly. The book was killed off part way through, though, and never made it to print. If you're familiar with the O'Reilly Cookbook format, it's problem/solution oriented. I don't remember which chapters specifically we completed, but I'll take a look tomorrow, and contact O'Reilly and see if they have any issues with donating them to the community. They aren't CFMX 7 specific, but many of the "recipes" are still relevant.

Instant ColdFusion (My first book) was a "ColdFusion Cookbook", but utlimately failed as a commercial endeavor. There were various reasons for this, one of the biggest being the the profileration of CF books around that time.

The book was also pre-CFC, so my impulse is to say that all most of the content would no be irrelevant. The book did drop off my last two royalty statements, which probably means its one step closer to reverting back to my hands

I'd love to re-work it to something more useful in today's CFMX world.

I think the CF cookbook market is small niche inside a small market, so I wouldn't expect a publisher to be interested, but I can see the real benefit of releasing something of the kind in a digital format.

Most Definitely ! You should go for it. I willing to contribute as much as i could ...

This would be great! One of the subjects I'd like to see is ways to implement log-in security, from a simple "if you don't have an userid/pwd, you can't get in" to "if you're an administrator and you have a valid userid/pwd, you can access X, Y and Z while if you're just a data-entry person, you can only access Z".

So later today I plan on buying coldfusioncookbook.com (if anyone here beats me to it, I'm going to kick your butt, as my five year old likes to say). Question - does it make sense to use the blog as the 'platform' for the content? It does make it easier for me. However, a second app, a fully different site, may make the site more easy to find and use. That means a bit more work for me though. A new app would also make it easier to correctly share content. So for example, Rob said he wanted to share. I could write a blog post and say, "Rob did this", but I'm not sure it really works well.

So I guess the question is - Do it here (quicker to start, but merged with the rest of my content) or do it as a new site (slower to start).

Ray, excellent ideas you have there. I say start off small with the 'platform' content, then slowly build to the 'share' content. Continue with what you have now because before long you might get swamped with user requests, programming and time issues. Don't burn yourself out.

Two cente here. I think the new seperate site is better for the reasons you listed, but I also think that it will make it less personal, providing possible revenue stream through select sponsors being included on the site. The guys at photoshoptv.com have done it right (best video podcast in my opinion).

Ray,

What about creating a new site for the express purpose of aggregating cookbook content, as you suggested. Instead of a blog format, what about using Canvas? That way, anyone who wanted to contribute content could and anyone else could fact check/proof entries.

I see the seeds of something great here. Maybe divide or categorize content by beginner, intermediate and advanced.

One of the things I hate about being a newbie to programming is I am always thinking I'm re-inventing the wheel when I know someone else has already done everything I'm trying to do, I just don't know where to find the answers to common "real-world" problems. If all of the common pieces were gathered together in one place (dream on) I would be 10 times more productive.

I concur with the idea of a separate site. It just makes more sense to not mix the two sites. And instead of Jedi Master, it could be called like Jedi Apprentice or something :-P

I'm with Rob, as much as I dislike Wiki's, this may be the legitimate use case for one.

--- Ben

Coldfusion By Example? You could make it a low cost subscription with authors/contributors recieveing 50%? NO one will get rich, but at least it won't be as big a burden and the quality standard could be held high.

I would be willing to pay for good examples/recipes.

Mark

Just an FYI: Domain name is purchased. I'm going to set up a new site for it. This will allow me to customize things a bit better.

Somthing along the lines of javaalmanac.com, perhaps? I found that to be an invaluable resources when I was doing java.

Great idea Ray, I'd be happy to help as well.

The javaalmanac is excellent. Thank you for the link.

What are people's thoughts on comments? I assume people agree it would be a nice feature, especially since CF lets you do things so many different ways.

great idea. I look forward to reading and contributing where I can.

My only comment regarding comments is that things will potentially get VERY heated. you've seen it on mailing lists and forums already. "best practice" type of posts/questions usually lead to maiming and dismemberment (y'know, figuratively speaking).

I still think it's a worthwhile endeavour, and I really hope to see it (and hope to see it succeed). But just for the sake of preventing perpetual flame-wars, might want to make it member-based just so you have the 'authority' (maybe ability is a better term) to yank anybody who gets too inflammatory.

/$0.02

I hear ya. My thoughts were to run it like the blog. Anyone can comment - but I get the comments via email so I can quickly jump in in case of spam or other problems. I'm also going to use captha so popups won't be necessary.

Also - the PDF version will allow you to include comments or leave them out.

In addition to doing the eBook PDF thing, you may also want to consider going with a print-on-demand service such as lulu.com to make the final book available to the masses. It's as simple as: upload a PDF, choose some cover art, done! It's also completely free to you, the author, and has generally good prices for the reader. The books are of very good quality (I have several from lulu on my shelves), and the beauty is that you don't have to worry about locking down *one* version. Every few months you can upload a new PDF and anyone who orders the book after that just magically gets the new version. (And if you choose to sell the book at cost or make a few bucks per copy, that's entirely up to you.)

I know this may offend some of the technolustier readers, but many people still do prefer to read from paper instead of a screen.

How will this be any different from what easycfm.com already provides?

Other then the fact that the content will be provided by Ray ... isn't it the same concept / content?

I'm not very familiar with easycfm. It seems as if easycfm is a collection of articles. That is not exactly what I have in mind for the cookbook. The cookbook is very process orientied. How do I do X? While I'm sure some content will be repeated, I say - the more the merrier. :) Btw - any reason why you didn't post your name? Even if you think my idea is horrible, it's not like I'm going to ban you or anything. :)

Consistency. I've always been noname when I post to blogs. You can can find me on Ben's and others. That's my Internet alias if you will :-) My first comment was as noname, so I kept it going.

One of these years we'll meet at a conference and I'll introduce myself as _____ (aka noname) ;-)

Plus, I don't have a blog with my own musings, so my name is really irrelevant.

Cool, I just wanted to make sure you (and anyone else) felt free to bitch and moan about my ideas w/o fear of reprisals. ;)

Please include as much OO/cfscript as possible. I have found a huge void in these areas in CF reference material. As a previous poster mentioned, I'm not looking for syntax, I'm looking for ways to produce efficient, compact, tight code. I feel that with the OO CF stuff I am doing I am making mistakes that many others have probably already made and/or know how to avoid. Thanks.

John - this is where I disagree. I want the cookbook to focus on problems. "OO" isn't a problem per se. I agree that learning OO is not always easy, but I really want the cookbook to focus on problems that can be solved. Very concrete - atomic type problems.

Sorry, I'm not asking you to change the format of the book/site. I agree, OO isn't a problem, but in many cases using OO architecture presents the best solution. Perhaps you could use OO and/or CF Script code examples as the solutions to some of the problems presented. I think it would be doing a great service to CF developers (at least the ones I work with, including myself!) I'm sure I will bookmark the site either way!

John,

There's a bit of a debate as to whether using cfscript really adds any value. Although some may consider it to look "cleaner" than tag based code, the counter arguement is that we're all so familiar with html/xhtml/xml, that doing cf all tag based is just "natural" from there.

Using tags over script also has the added benefit of making it much easier to do code gen from tools. Parsing out both tags and script is prohibitive in a lot of cases. Add to that the relative limitations of cfscript, and the fact that Macromedia (Adobe) in the past has stated they won't be doing anything new in cfscript, and I think you'll have a stronger arguement in favor of using tags over script.

That said, I don't believe Ray's made any mention either way on whether code samples are preferred in tag vs. script format.

I haven't given it much thought - but in general I prefer tag over script, so you can asusme most will be in tag form.

Hi Ray

Interesting idea. A comment about comments - I think they will need to be moderated. By this I mean that if there are two comments to an article, and they are both valid, different to each other, and different to the content of the article itself, they should be promoted to be articles themselves. Otherwise, the CF beginner could get confused about 'who is right' - 'Why are there 3 ways on the one page to do the one thing??'

Also, if a comment makes a 'correction' to an article, this should be either fixed in the artice itself, or the article should say 'See the third comment for more information'.

I'm not sure that a blog is the best way to go - perhaps something more like a forum? A well-organised forum with a clear heirarchy of content can make things easier to find than the standard blog format - especially with sub-categories.

PS - Do you actually do any paid work??

Antony - yes good points. In my blog, I typically let "fixes" stay in the comments. For the cfcookbook, they will be incorporated. As for the issue of confusing a newbie - I will try my best to make it clear that the comments are just that - comments. Thats why I plan on having a download option that doesnt show the comments, and that will be the default.