Farcry CMS

1
Farcry CMS

• A Free, Open Source ColdFusion Content Management
  System

2
Who is Steve Rittler?

• CF lover since 1999 (version 4.0!)
• Certified Advanced CF Developer
• Certified Flash MX 2004 Developer
• Manager of the Philadelphia CFUG

3
What is Farcry?

• Farcry consists of
• Database interface (FourQ)
• The Content Object API (the COAPI)
• A webskin for rendering the content
• Remember Spectra? This isnt it!

4
What do I need?

• App server
• CFMX 6.1 on JRun 4, WebLogic, WebSphere, Sun
  ONE
• Database
• MSSQL, Oracle, PostgreSQL, MySQL
• Others if you want to make it happen
• OS
• Windows, most nix Flavors

5
No, really what do I need?

• A reasonable comfort level with CFCs
• Comprehend some OO concepts
• Willingness to let the COAPI and FourQ do some
  work for you
• Patience to get the initial installation working
• (hey, all web servers are different!)

6
Benefits of using Farcry

• 100 Open Source
• Deployed, tested and still evolving
• Pseudo-OO approach to Content Management
• Active developer base, many deployments worldwide
• Paid support options are available

7
Potential Disadvantages

• Youll miss the easy page-based, linear CF
  programming model
• Its open source. Sometimes youre a pioneer
• Temptation to mod the Farcry Core codebase is
  strong

8
Free? As in beer?

• Yes!
• But
• If youre smart, youll give back to the
  community by contributing to the Farcry core
• Farcry is offered under the Common Public License
  1.0

9
How does it work?

• A page has containers
• These containers invoke rules
• Rules return data and display methods
• Display methods drive the webskin which renders
  the data (content)
• Repeat for all content areas on page

10
But isnt that dog slow?

• Farcry has a very simple, but very effective
  caching engine
• Sample site load time decreased 75 after
  activating caching!
• Server memory load did not increase
  proportionally to compensate

11
Demo

• Now showing
• A Live Farcry-powered website
• The Farcry Administrator
• Simple page creation
• Content editing

12
Security

• Flexible roles-based security model
• Integrates with LDAP and Active Directory or any
  database (ships with one that works fine)
• Can restrict access to admin functionality on a
  very granular level

13
Extending Farcry

• New content types
• Managed inside the Farcry DB
• Simple integration
• Included Objects
• External application integration
• Looks like Farcry, but it isnt!

14
Extending Farcry Demo

• New content types
• A Presentation object
• Simple integration
• Contact us form

15
So what else can it do?

• Content syndication
• RSS/XML feeds built in
• Built in reporting
• A strong selling point, BTW
• Verity search engine integration

16
Support

• Farcry-dev mailing list
• http//farcry.daemon.com.au/go/support/mailing-lis
  ts
• Farcry website
• http//farcry.daemon.com.au/
• Google!

17
In closing

• Its free and powered by ColdFusion
• Extensible in every way imaginable
• Works great and implementation is fast
• The folks at Daemon and on the mailing list are
  very good at helping you!

18
Thank you!

• This presentation
• http//www.countermarch.com/cfunited
• Happy Holiday!