Savvy Software will be available at two upcoming ColdFusion based conferences this summer.

CF.Objective - Focused on enterprise ColdFusion related topics.  May 1st through May 4th, 2008 in St. Paul, MN.  We are a sponsor and exhibitor, and the CF.Objective site is powered by Savvy Content Manager.

CFUnited - Covers all skill levels for ColdFusion, Flex and AIR.  June 19th - 21st, 2008.  We are a sponsor and exhibitor.

Both of these conferences offer great value to attendees.  Please stop by and visit us if you are attending.

4.5.2 of Savvy Content Manager has been released.  

Included:

• Faster rendering of the nav object.
• Improved UI for highlighting content to be edited.
• Many small bug fixes.

Upgrades should be careful with the new nav object style changes as it may require slight updates to your existing CSS.

It has come to our attention that our search object suffers from a cross site scripting vulnerability in some versions.

We have created a small patch to the affected file which you can download and install into your Savvy CM installation.

The type of vulnerability is a non-persistent cross-site scripting one, and you can read about it here.

Download the fix.

To install place the correct displaysearchobject.cfm file for your version into your /actionfiles/ folder.  You do not need to restart or reinitialize, it will start working immediately.

Lately we've been doing a number of demos for non-profit organizations.  I continue to be amazed at the types of organizations around and the different missions they are serving.  Earlier this week I did a demo for The Center for Wildlife, an organization that cares for injured wildlife in Southern Maine.  They do a great deal of work with raptors (birds of prey) including owls and hawks.  The heavy snow cover in New England this year has driven many small animals towards the roads, which has caused the birds to hunt there and lead to many accidents.

Most non-profits have an educational component in their missions and the web has given them a very cost-effective tool for communicating and educating people about their causes.  We know Savvy is a great tool for them, and I like the fact that I get to learn more about these groups just by doing my job.  There are some great organizations out there;  pick one to support today.

We are pleased to announce that Savvy Content Manager 4.5 is now available.

Documentation is published here.

New video tutorials are posted here.

Some key new features:

• Password Protect Any Content, Page, or Section of a Site
• Unlimited Member Accounts
• New Navigation Administration (with drag and drop ease)
• Content Objects Without Editor Option
• Ability To Easily Move Existing Pages
• Google Sitemap Support
• New Reports
• Much More
  

Josh Cyr, our lead developer, recently participated in a CFMeetUp and demonstrated how to implement Savvy into a site.  Starting with HTML and a design, Josh adds the Savvy tags and builds out an entire site in an hour, including questions and answers.  If you've been curious about how easy it is to implement Savvy, this demonstration will give you a good idea of what's involved from a developer's perspective.

When we launched Savvy several years ago, we researched and trademarked our name (actually we paid an attorney more than we care to think about) and our logo.  That was all good and a learning experience.  What was even more educational was the process of international trademarks.  Apparently, if you want to trademark your property on an international basis (at least for those countries that respect such things), you must do so within 90 days of filing your request here in the US.  I don't recall anyone ever telling us this and I'm not sure we would have worried given the early stage of the business.  We have had a couple of companies here in the states infringe on our name (one stole our logo) and have paid the attorney more money to protect our property (we won, but that's another blog post).  A while back it was brought to our attention that there is in fact another Savvy CM, this one from a company in New Zealand.  The attorney offered to take more money to send a cease and desist order, but he also advised us there is nothing that we can legally do since we didn't file years ago.  I guess we'll just have to settle with feeling flattered.

Let me first start off this discussion by stating that we do not offer web hosting to clients.  We are often asked by clients if hosting their own Savvy site makes sense.  Usually these clients have a high-speed internet connection and may already own their own servers.  Before we can recommend that a client host their own site, we ask the following questions:

1) Do you already own Adobe ColdFusion and do you have a server-level database running on a server?  Savvy requires Adobe ColdFusion to be installed on the server and needs access to a proper datebase.  The current cost for ColdFusion as listed on Adobe's site is $1,299.00 for the standard edition.  You may qualify for an educational discount, but it's still an investment.  You can use MySQL for your database (it's free), but you may want to invest in a third-party control panel (budget $200.00) to make administration of your databases easier.  If you want MS-SQL, I won't even begin to decipher Microsoft's licensing costs.  Depending on the load on your web server, you will want to consider having the SQL database run on its own server.

2) Do you have redundant high-speed internet access into your facility?  If you're using a CMS to power your web site, you've decided that your web site is a significant (maybe strategic) resource for your organization.  Without redundant lines, you're at the mercy of every backhoe operator, faulty router or inattentive driver.  And before you agree you have redundant lines, please make sure they don't share the same phone pole or service provider.

3) Do you have a back-up power supply?  What type of power generation is available in the event of a power outage?  If you live along the coastline or in an area that is subject to significant storms, power back-up during a weather event is critical.  After all, a CMS powered web site lets you communicate during a disaster, provided your servers are running and your network is up.

4) Do you have the resources and expertise to manage external servers?  If you're religious about installing updates, managing firewalls and locking down your servers, hosting your own web site may be an option.  If your last backup is sitting on top of your server, you may want to consider using a hosting service.

Most organizations that host their own sites have legitimate business reasons for wanting to do so.  Given today's inexpensive and professional third-party hosting services, cost is no longer a legitimate business reason.  In fact, for most, hosting your own site will increase your costs when compared to third-party hosts.

The Permanente Medical Group, a division of Kaiser Permanente of Oakland, California has been evaluating Savvy since early this summer.  They have put it through both technical and end-user testing.  We are pleased to announce that PMG has selected Savvy CM Unlimited to help meet their enterprise-wide content management needs.  

In other news, the City of Airdre, Alberta, CA recently upgraded to Savvy CM Unlimited to service all the web sites servicing their community.  This continues the acceptance of Savvy CM for both individual and enterprise level web sites.

We are pleased to announce that Savvy CM is fully ColdFusion 8 compatible.  ColdFusion 8 offers substantial performance benefits as well as many new features.  If you host with a shared host you may contact them regarding upgrading to CF 8.  If you run your own server you can purchase an upgrade version of CF 8.

Savvy CM requires a small patch that is for CF 8 compatibility.  Contact us for this patch, read how to manually update the code, or download it from your server subscription.