Why ColdFusion is worth the money!
I’m currently installing this new dedicated RackSpaceCloud server. While I have fallen in love with ColdFusion in the last year or so, I am still a CF n00b and not ready to completely switch. So my new server needs both ColdFusion (for new projects) and PHP (mainly for my WordPress blog).
After I installed Apache, MySQL and PHP, I started the CF install. It literally took me less than 10 minutes to get ColdFusion up and running (even on the officially unsupported Debian distro). I just downloaded the installer, launched it and when the installation was done, I had a fully working CF9 server that ties in to my Apache install. I set up my datasources, uploaded some of the scripts I used in the MAX widget and found that everything was working just fine.
I started copying over the files and databases from my WordPress blog on the old server and when that was done, I tested my WordPress install. While the public side of the blog seems to work just fine, the admin side is totally messed up. Even though my PHP.ini file clearly states that scripts have 128Meg to play with, some plugins in the admin nag that the “Allowed memory size of 33554432 bytes exhausted”. Wait a minute… That’s 32M instead of the 128M I specified in the config file. So I ask “the Googles” if they know a solution. I get hundreds of links back. They all suggest the same things.
1) change the memory_limit in the PHP.ini
As it was already on 128M, that was not the solution.
2) add define(’WP_MEMORY_LIMIT’, ‘128M’); to your wp-config.php file
Did that. It didn’t solve the issue.
3) Add php_value memory_limit 128M to an .htaccess file
Tried that. No change.
So… While I did get hundreds of results back, none of them actually solves this issue. I contacted RackSpace’s helpdesk. Even though they can’t really help me as I am on a dedicated box, they were very accommodating and genuinely wanted to help out. But… They also gave me the exact same suggestions I already found on Google. And so now I am stuck. This seems to be a very unique problem and I have no idea what is causing it and no way of getting support.
I have now spent over 10 hours trying to fix this with no luck.
So yes… ColdFusion is a paid solution but if I can get that up and running in 10 minutes compared to the 10+ hours I’ve now spent on this PHP install, it is totally worth its price. And then I’m not even talking about the features CF9 provides out of the box without any additional installs… Now… Can someone please port WordPress to ColdFusion? kthxbye.
Oh… If you happen to think of a possible solution, feel free to leave a note in the comments or send me a message.
Update: For the record: This is NOT CF love vs PHP hate. As this post clearly shows, I am still using PHP next to CF. It is also possible that I did something wrong in the install but I’m sure you’ll agree that there is a big difference in the user experience…
Recently purchased CS4? Get Flex Builder 3 Standard for free!
Did you purchase CS4 Web Premium or CS4 Master Collection on or after September 15, 2009? Then get your free copy of Flex Builder 3 Standard today!
Check out https://freeriatools.adobe.com/cs for more info.
I would also like to remind you that Flex Builder 3 is also/still free for education and unemployed developers. Additionally ColdFusion is also free for education.
Reducing CPU usage in Adobe AIR
Jonnie Hallman from DestroyTwitter fame and recently employed by the Adobe XD team, wrote a great article about how he reduced CPU usage in his AIR application.
“AIR gets a bad rap for being a bloated runtime, using up a lot of precious memory and CPU. Although a lot of AIR applications seem to fall into this trap, it doesn’t have to be this way. There are a number of techniques you can use to develop a lightweight application that rivals native programs in terms of performance,” he says.
The article explains what framerate throttling is and how best to implement it in your application.
Flash Player 10.1 & AIR 2.0: It’s not just about new features…
Recently I’ve been getting a lot of questions about the performance and stability of the Flash Player and AIR runtimes. I got another one just this morning and thought it would be a good idea to write a quick blog post about this.
Let’s talk about Flash Player first. In all honesty, I also encounter the occasional Flash Player crash in Safari on Mac OS X. Many times this seems to be caused by an uncaught exception. Some of these crashes could have been avoided if the developer had written the code to catch that exception. Flash Player 10.1 will make this a lot easier with a global exception handler.
Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not trying to push this back in to the developer’s shoes but it is something to think about. And just to be totally clear: Flash Player shouldn’t crash on an uncaught exception. That said, you should know that the Flash Player team is aware of some stability issues and is working on that. They are also constantly monitoring our public bug base so if you do encounter a crash, make sure you log it in the bug base! You can rest assured that stability and performance are always on top of the agenda of the Flash Player team.
I also keep hearing people say that the AIR runtime uses too much of the available system resources. Obviously this depends heavily on what the application is actually doing at that time. If your application is suffering from this symptom, make sure you read these blog posts. Soon after reading these three posts, your AIR application will use less than 1% of CPU while idle. In AIR 2.0 the target is to reduce the idle CPU usage to 0%. Early tests with AIR 2.0 show a 30% memory reduction and a 50% reduction in JavaScript CPU consumption. We’re also targeting a 40% reduction in runtime size.
We haven’t announced any specific dates for the release of Flash Player 10.1 and AIR 2.0 but make sure you keep an eye on Adobe Labs and our blogs.
10 leading CEOs discuss the Open Screen Project and Flash
CEOs from ARM, Broadcom, DoCoMo, Google, HTC, Motorola, NVIDIA, Palm, QUALCOMM, and RIM talk about how they’re bringing Flash Platform technologies to their devices and platforms as part of the Open Screen Project and why they think it’s important to have Flash on their devices and platforms.
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