Looking for simple forum or bulletin board code...

[Hedge]

I'm looking for some simple forum or bulletin board open source software for coldfusion that might be out there. Any suggestions? Just need logged in users to be able to post and get email notifications on anything that is posted.

[WolfShade]

I haven't tried it, myself, but I've heard good things about Raymond Camden's Galleon.

HTH,

^ _ ^

[WolfShade]

I just ran across this link, describing a few forum platforms (including Galleon).  Worth checking.

http://blog.itlandmark.com/134/best-coldfusion-forum-software/

HTH,

^ _ ^

[Charlie Arehart]

Sadly, that blog post is old (2013) and doesn't have links to the software it names. And some of them are no more (fusetalk, cfmbb), while the others have not been updated in years (Galleon in 2013, and cf forum which lists its system requirements as CF 4.0.1). There are still a couple more, but they are no more updated.

Sadly, the market for CFML-based discussion forums has gone the way of the dodo bird.

But I do list the few that remain, as a category of my CF411.com site, specifically:

http://www.cf411.com/bb​

Really, it's the place to check when wondering, "what are the available options related to CF to do x?"

[WolfShade]

Thanks for the info, Charlie.  It's a shame that the ColdFusion engine/platform is losing popularity.

If I had time, I'd build an open source forum platform.  Sadly, I don't, and wouldn't be able to support/update it.  <heavy sigh>

V/r,

^ _ ^

[nic_tunney]

There was a time when it made sense to build things like forums in ColdFusion, but today this is less and less necessary (unless it is your business model) due to the third party tools that exist outside of our toolbox that are so simple to integrate.  It isn't that the platform lost popularity, it is that the way we develop and integrate has changed.  Hopefully no one is focused on a single language any more.  Those days are long gone.  Learn how to apply each tool in your toolbox to get the job done.  I wouldn't grow a tree to get wood to build a house, unless my business focus was generating revenue from tree sales.

-Nic

[Charlie Arehart]

Thanks, Nic. I was about to write the same to WolfShade, that this seems less about CF "losing popularity" and more just about practical realities that a) solutions need not be built in CF to be useful and b) other tools often have larger audiences of users and developers, whatever platform they're written in.

As for the whole "CF losing popularity", anyone troubled by that (or continuing to assert it) would do well to watch the recent session by CF Product Manager Rakshith Naresh, presented at recent CF conferences and recorded just last week also on my Online ColdFusion Meetup. In "Busting Myths, the present and future of ColdFusion", he reviews the successes and failings of CF in the recent past, and highlights several important indicators which show that CF is in many ways thriving far more than most would ever believe. The recording, like all those for the past 250 CF Meetup sessions, are available at http://recordings.coldfusionmeetup.com/ .

[That said, this is not the place to open another back and forth on why people think CF really IS dying or what they think Adobe ought to be doing about it. Open a new thread for that, though honestly until one watches that video, they would embarrass themselves by trotting out the same old tired cliches which it counters.]

[WolfShade]

First of all, let me say that I occasionally state things in a way that makes sense in my head, but not so much when spoken or typed.  I did not mean to imply that the lack of fresh CF based forum platforms was in any way related to CF losing popularity.  I was just lamenting the loss of popularity _after_ having stated that I don't have time to create/update/support my own open source forum platform.

And I am glad to hear that ACF is in some areas thriving.  I sincerely hope that the trend continues in an upward fashion!  I love ColdFusion (although I'm a little upset with - and very critical of - Adobe, and am quite verbal about it, at times.  What can I say?  Adobe acquired an engine that I adore, and I am not completely happy with how Adobe is treating CF.  But that's a different topic.)

However, there is no denying the lack of CF jobs being offered, lately.  I am fortunate to be working for an entity that plans to keep CF around, for the foreseeable future.  But do a search for CF jobs, and the number offered pales in comparison to PHP, Ruby, .Net, et al.  I recently (five years ago) interviewed with the Federal Reserve Bank, who advertised a CF position.  When I got there, it turns out that they were looking for someone to port their CF app over to .Net.  They weren't sure if they wanted a CF guy willing to learn .Net, or a .Net guy willing to learn CF - they went with the latter.

CF developers aren't extinct, but I see droves of developers jumping ship in favor of whatever the flavor-of-the-week is.  And the places that still use ACF aren't paying more for the developers that stuck with CF, or still remember how to code CF, shrinking as those numbers are.  It's depressing.

Anyway, this is way off topic, so I'm not going to respond to anything else, here.  The OP wanted a decent CF-based forum platform, and there aren't many left, and the ones that are left are four+ years old.  I made a couple of suggestions, others have added information, and the OP hasn't replied, which makes me think OP isn't coming back, or won't come back for a week or two. 

V/r,

^ _ ^

[Charlie Arehart]

You don't have to reply, but for the sake of others who may find this thread in the future, I can't just let pass a couple of your statements. You say some things as facts which really are merely your observation.

For instance, you can't say that "the places that still use ACF aren't paying more for the developers that stuck with CF, or still remember how to code CF", unless you have polled all CF shops or taken a statistically significant sampling of them, right? (Or found someone who did: more on that in a moment.)

And it would seem you didn't watch that video, or you'd not refer to "shrinking as those numbers are" (about CF developers and/or shops), because Rakshith points out how sales of CF (new licenses, to new customers) are up.

So while sure, we may all know of some who are or have left CF (some making a case to loudly pronounce it, others just quietly having moved on and being no longer around), there must either be new folks learning and using CF in those shops, or new opps available to those who know it.

Indeed, there are always hundreds of CF jobs available, through any of several CF job listing sites that I point to as a category of my CF411 site, specifically http://www.cf411.com/cfjobs .

And as for whether any org would do such a sampling of CF shops to find out pay rates, I doubt will happen because a) such orgs probably already presume CF's not worth worrying about (though I think they're wrong) and b) there are simply too many CF shops (thousands or tens of thousands, depending on who you ask) to easily get such a statistically significant sample.

Finally, as for whether the situation around CF is "depressing", that too is just personal opinion.I clearly don't share it. 🙂 Nor do many others who speak up when such discussions arise.

And I do speak with confidence on all this, because I myself get new clients every week (as I have for 10 years), and I work with dozens of clients each week (old and new), so that I do have insight into the liveliness of CF in hundreds of shops each year.And there are nearly always a few people in these shops I help, and for them CF is vital to their business, so this is not like "I just help the shops who have no one left doing CF". That may be the case once in a while, but it's definitely not the norm.

Why don't we hear in the community from "all these people supposedly doing CF"? I suspect it's because they're busy doing what they do. It may take time for a new crop of folks (many with years of valuable experience to share) to rise up and fill the void left by those who have moved on. I'm bullish on that possibility and see it happening in different media (these forums, the facebook CF groups, the CF slack channels, twitter, and so on).

But hey, there will be about 500 of them at the Adobe CF Summit next week. Gotta wonder why Adobe would be funding that effort, and bringing out nearly the entire CF engineering team (typically), if they "don't care about CF". And why would these 500 people go to a conference about a dying language/platform? or if their companies were moving off of it? And I certainly don't think that these 500 people can be the ONLY people left doing CF in the world. Some obviously can't come (too far, too busy, too expensive to travel, etc.), and others are remaining behind to run things.

It sure seems THAT 500-person audience is a statistically significant sample, whether representative of either thousands or indeed tens of thousands of people still doing CF. Somehow, that never gets acknowledged by the folks claiming CF is dead or dying.

[Hedge]

So really no viable forum or bulletin board option out there in CF anymore it appears.

[WolfShade]

Have you looked at Galleon?

V/r,

^ _ ^

[Hedge]

Yeah it has not seen an update in over 6 years. Looking for something that I know would work with CF 2016

[TheNephalim]

Why don't you install it and try it?

Also, as you know, ColdFusion 2016 has the static code analyzer that would tell you what code may break in ColdFusion 2016.

Our site has tons of code that is super old and none of it failed to work with ColdFusion 2016.  I ran the analyzer against the code and it actually identified bugs from some other developers that I went through and fixed.

I downloaded Camden's code to give it a whirl in the near future because our in-house developed forum is not that great and his looks pretty decent.