FlexFusion

Not exactly the most original title for my first post to my very own blog, but everyone has to start somewhere…and yes I do know that it is spelled Flexibility, but this is a better play on words.

I’m writing to this blog partially as a way to post my thoughts, and partially as a way for me to remember things that may have caused me grief while coding in the past.  In writing them, perhaps I can help others through the same issues but with less grief.

I began writing to a blog over at ColdFusion Community and will probably still post there every now and then, but I thought that I would try creating my own rather than going solely through there.  My wife has been asking for a place to post her thoughts so I figured why not keep everything together and just post them both to the family web site.  She hasn’t decided on what she wants hers to be called yet, but once she does, I’m sure she’ll be posting like crazy!

I had originally tried out blogspot/blogger and thought that it would be a simple process to get it up and running.  Initially it was.  I made one post.  I then decided to start copying over some of my posts from CF Community, and that was where my problems started.  At CFC, you could “future date” your posts.  I posted specific days for the blogspot posts, not knowing that that just puts a date on the post, not when it will actually be posted.  After I made 4 posts (apparently too quickly for blogspot), my blog got mark as potential spam.  I got sent an e-mail notifying me that my blog was mark as potential spam, so I went and clicked the “unspam me” link, and went on my merry way.  After 5 days of hearing nothing back, I decided to search around to find another way to notify Google that I was actually a real person and not trying to spam anyone (I’m sure talking about my history would definitely boost the blog spam ratings of someone, somewhere).  Finally I found a link, filled in more or less the same information as before, and waited another 5 days before hearing nothing.  After posting nothing for 10 days, and finally having something to say, I decided enough was enough and started to look around for other solutions.  I then came across WordPress.com

I signed up for an account which, just like blogspot, was quick and easy.  Signed in and started to make my first post.  As I went through my day, I surfed around a bit and found someone who posted that wordpress.com was built off of open source code at wordpress.org  Having a family site written in PHP (for fun, I know, crazy aren’t I ), I decided I would try installing the wordpress.org pages and give it a whirl.  Well, after running through the 5 minute installation process, I’m glad I went with Wordpress.  It was such a simple thing to get going, and looks very clean and professional throughout.  Having the PHP pages available is really nice for customization, and as a learning tool.  I’m always looking for ways to improve my coding skills, and what better way than to look through code that has had perhaps thousands of eyes looking at it, improving and optimizing the code.  Plus the simplicity of the administration section will be a boon for the wife.  She wants something that’s easy to use, that she can post her thoughts and pictures and be done with.

This blog will probably be primarily focused on Adobe Flex, Adobe AIR, and Adobe/Macromedia ColdFusion, but have a smattering of personal items, probably some rants, and certainly a PHP issue every now and then.  Hopefully it will become something that will get a regular following, but if it helps one person who was having difficulty coding, then it will have done its job.