Robert Diamond

Macromedia has started an interesting new promotional campaign for ColdFusion that proclaims a whole slew of statistics and gives a partial list of some of the big names using ColdFusion solutions. You can see it on their Web site at http://macromedia.com/software/coldfusion/proven. They tout many of the impressive numbers that we've reported here as they've come out, including more than 300,000 developers at over 10,000 companies worldwide, more than 125,000 ColdFusion servers deployed, relied on by 40% of the Media Metrix Top 50 Web Properties, more than 19.7 million CF pages, and a bunch more. It's worth checking out if you need facts and figures to convince a client and/or boss that ColdFusion is the way to go.

This is very good to see because the success or failure of ColdFusion as a product, and as an industry, is closely tied to the support and promotion that Macromedia (along with other companies in the CFML space, including New Atlanta) and the application vendors put behind it. Equally important, though, to sustaining a healthy industry is the community, and Macromedia's note of "thousands of third-party components and add-ons" hits the nail on the head perfectly.

Those of us who follow the software and development industry on a daily basis will tell you unequivocally that the lifeblood of development software is the level of interest, activity, and passion from its community - and one of the best ways to measure that is through the work that they're churning out for public as well as private consumption. If developers aren't active and developing, then there's not much of an industry. It's a great thing that there are two CFML servers on the market, and countless tools - from content management servers to bulletin boards to shopping carts - so many that we could fill an entire book with them, never mind an editorial column.

Aside from all these higher-level concerns about the industry, an active add-on community offers a great advantage - and that's that it makes all of our lives easier. Why reinvent the wheel if it's rolling along fine? I myself have saved many hours of time by utilizing custom tags, and I know that most of you out there have as well.

There are several sites out there offering CFML add-ons, starting with Macromedia's own ColdFusion Exchange at www.macromedia.com/cfusion/exchange/index.cfm, which has 3,988 entries as I'm writing this, and it wouldn't surprise me if it breaks 4,000 by the time you read it. (Another note about Macromedia's exchange is that you can find equally great add-ons for Flash, Dreamweaver, and other MM products.)

Another great site is CFTagStore.com, which proudly proclaims that it's "Built by ColdFusion Developers, for ColdFusion Developers" - and it is! It's a pretty unusual site because it allows anyone who's built a CF custom tag or component to post it on the site and to make some money off of it. These are two great places to start looking; between the two sites you should be able to find nearly anything that's available out there, but if all else fails - Google! And if you still can't find what you're looking for, build it yourself and upload it. We can never have too many tags and components out there.