Get your free copy of my CF Alive book Read on to see how to get your free copy of my CF Alive book. But first, what is the book about? ColdFusion is a vibrant and modern language for complex, data-driven enterprise apps. While some companies have abandoned CF as dying, more farsighted dev teams have embraced CF. Learn how they are making it the most modern, secure and state-of-the-art web development ecosystem. Bar none. The CF Alive book explains how you can: * Modernize your legacy CF apps with 14 best practices for easy-to-maintain apps * Discover 27 state-of-the-art tools from my hand-picked list that will make you more efficient at CF development * Inspire others developers and young programmers with our proven 21 outreach methods * Learn 8 keys to improve CF Marketing and be proud of using ColdFusion * Contribute to making CF more alive this year You can buy the book on Amazon or you can get a free copy by commenting on this post saying “I want CF Alive” and optionally saying why you want it. What readers are saying about CF Alive: "In CF Alive, the author explores best practices surrounding modern web development, recommending specific software tools and other resources for implementing these best practices for Adobe ColdFusion and other CFML application developers. What I liked best about the book (Kindle version), is that I could read about a recommended software tool, then link directly to a CF Alive Podcast between the author and a highly-experienced ColdFusion developer with expertise in using that tool." - G Cantor "This book is taking on a tough challenge: convince the web development world that ColdFusion is worth investing in. There's a lot working against ColdFusion: its age, its decline in popularity, its perception as stagnant. What this book does, however, is line up all the many responses to those criticisms. It reaches out to new and former ColdFusion developers with the words of the very community that writes ColdFusion code today. It also speaks to existing ColdFusion developers and encourages them to embrace the latest techniques and technology that the ColdFusion community offers to help bolster and improve the name of ColdFusion in the development community. If you are a current or former ColdFusion developer or simply curious about developing for ColdFusion, you should check this book out." - Miles Rausch "I love the inspirational quotes throughout the book, and all the contributions from other CF community members. This reminds me of the Fusion Authority articles and the great sense of community support that they provided. The “Outreach” chapter is excellent in this regard — reading it brought back a lot of the feelings I got when I first met people in the CF community and shows how passionate the CFML community still is. This is an excellent reference for people new to CMFL looking to get a jump start on recommended practices, and a great resource for anyone doing web development that just needs to be inspired again. (Full disclosure: I was interviewed for this book and also helped with the technical editing." - Nolan Erck "We have all seen legacy developers stuck in their ways. It is time for ColdFusion developers to step up and modernize! CF Alive is a great resource written to provide the necessary tools and resources to update, secure, scale and deploy new and better applications with ColdFusion. This book helps from the newbie CF developer to the larger team of developers looking at ways to support and move forward with ColdFusion. Additional topics include containers, ways to bring more applications to the cloud, better security of our application source, testing environments, opportunities to use the open source Lucee engine and more. It is time to bring more educational opportunities to developers with the rapid application development of ColdFusion. This book hits it straight on. CF is Alive!" - William Frankhouser About the author Michaela Light is the host of the CF Alive Podcast and has interviewed more than 60 ColdFusion experts. In each interview, she asks “What Would It Take to make CF more alive this year?” The answers inspired this book. Michaela has been programming in ColdFusion for more than 25 years. She founded TeraTech in 1989. The company specializes in ColdFusion application development, security and optimization. She founded the CFUnited Conference and runs the annual State of the CF Union survey. Get your copy of CF Alive now You can buy the book on Amazon at amazon.com/CF-Alive-Making-C… Or you can get a free copy by commenting below. Just say “I want CF Alive” and optionally why you want it. And I will PM you back with the book PDF and Mobi file. Easy!

Zero Trust for Legacy CF Web Apps: A Practical Starting Point Your legacy CF app may have been built when “inside the network” meant “safe.” That assumption has aged about as well as storing passwords in a spreadsheet. People work from home. Vendors connect remotely. APIs talk to outside systems. Old service accounts hang around for years. One stolen login can open doors nobody remembers building. The One Ring approach to permissions, where one account rules them all, creates a lot of trouble. Zero Trust gives you a better approach. Check who wants access, confirm what they should reach, and limit how far they can go. And yes, you can start doing this around an old CF app. 👉 If your legacy CF app has access rules left over from another age, explore TeraTech’s ColdFusion security services teratech.com/coldfusion-secu…. We help teams tighten access, patch weak spots, and make older CF apps safer without sending the whole system into Mount Doom. Start with the people who have the most power Look at your CF Administrator access first. Who can log in? How many people have admin rights to your app admin? Are old employee accounts still active? Can an admin page be reached from the public internet? Then look at the powerful users inside the CF app. A finance manager may need far more access than a customer. A support rep may need to view an account without changing payment data. Give each person the access their job requires. Check the app’s hidden identities too People are only part of the picture. Ancient code sometimes carries ancient secrets. Your CF app may use database accounts, API keys, scheduled tasks, service accounts, mail credentials, and connections to other systems. Some of those credentials may have more power than the app needs. Find them. Write down what they can reach. Reduce their permissions where you can. Also, look for credentials sitting in CF source code, old config files, shared documents, and forgotten scripts. Put walls around the important parts A legacy CF app may need to stay online while you improve it. You can still make access harder for an attacker. Limit access to the ColdFusion Administrator. Protect database servers from direct public access. Put sensitive internal tools behind stronger login controls. Separate test systems from production. Think of Minas Tirith. One wall may fail. Several walls give you more chances to stop the visitor before they reach the throne room. Apply the same idea inside the app. Sensitive actions should check the user’s rights every time they run. Make access visible Zero Trust works much better when you can see what people and systems are doing. Log admin access. Track failed logins. Watch unusual account activity. Record sensitive actions. Review accounts when staff leave or change roles. Your CF team should be able to answer simple questions after something strange happens. Who logged in? What did they access? What changed? Which account made the request? Without those answers, an incident turns into an archaeological dig. Start small You do not need to rebuild the CF app before improving access. Start with one important CF system. List the users, admins, service accounts, APIs, and databases connected to it. Remove access nobody needs. Tighten the most powerful accounts. Add stronger login controls and better logs. Then walk the next part of the road. Zero Trust works well as a series of small CF security moves. Each one gives an attacker fewer places to wander and your team a clearer view of the remaining paths. Legacy CF can live behind modern gates. You just need to know who has the keys. 🌟Onward! In the next issue of the CF Alive newsletter, we’ll compare ColdFusion and Go when it comes to secure service APIs. P.S. If too many people, accounts, or old integrations hold keys to your CF kingdom, send us a message teratech.com/contact/?utm_so… or DM. TeraTech’s ColdFusion team can help tighten access, clean up old permissions, and build a safer path around your legacy app.

Pen Testing Your CF App: What to Expect and How to Prepare Hiring someone to attack your own CF app may sound strange. But that is what a penetration test does. And it does it for a good reason. A skilled security tester can find weak spots before a real attacker does. Think of it as sending a scout ahead before the orcs reach the gates. For a CIO, the hard part often comes before the test. What will the tester touch? Could the test break production? What does the team need to do? What happens if the tester finds a serious problem hiding in the CF app? 👉 If your CF app needs a security check, explore TeraTech’s ColdFusion security services teratech.com/coldfusion-secu…. We help teams find weak spots, fix risky code, and prepare old CF apps for security testing. First, agree on the test plan A good pen test starts with a clear plan. Decide which CF apps, APIs, websites, and servers the tester can test. Set the test dates. List any systems that are off-limits. Even a fellowship needs to know where it is going before the journey begins. You also need clear rules for production. Some tests are safe to run there. Other deeper pen tests should run in on your staging server. Important systems may need limits on traffic, data changes, or user access. Write down the rules before the test starts. Give testers enough access A tester should see more than your login page. Create test accounts for the main user types. These may include regular users, managers, and admins. If your CF app has APIs, give the tester test keys and basic instructions. Even Gandalf had trouble with locked doors. This helps the tester find problems that only appear after login. They may find broken access rules, weak sessions, or data that regular users should not see. They may also find old CF admin tools that no one uses anymore. Tell the tester about your most important business tasks, too. A checkout page needs more care than an old staff list. Expect more than a scan A security scanner can find useful problems. A good CF pen test goes further. In other words, a scanner can point at the shadows. A good tester finds out what is hiding in them. The tester may check: * Login controls * User sessions * File uploads * API access * Old web pages * User input * User permissions The tester may also see if small problems can work together. One small problem may not seem serious. But two or three problems together may let an attacker get deep into the CF app. Your team should watch the app during the test. Logs can show what the tester reached and how the app handled the test. Prepare for the report The final report should help your team fix problems. It should explain: * What the tester found * Proof of the problem * How the problem could hurt the business * How soon you should fix it Your CF developers should know where each problem is and what they need to do. Fix the most serious problems first. These may include open admin access or leaks of private data. Put lower-risk work into your normal maintenance plan. Some fixes may need code changes. Others may need a CF update, server setting, or access rule. Do not let the report sit unread in a folder. Test the fixes again A CF fix needs to be checked. After your team fixes the main problems, ask the tester to test them again. This check can find weak fixes and new problems caused by the changes. It also gives the CIO a clear answer when the board, an auditor, or a customer asks what happened. You can say: The app was tested. The CF team fixed the serious problems. The fixes were tested again. That is much better than saying, “We ran a scan last year. Steve may have the report.” Pen testing works best as part of regular CF security work. Update the CF platform. Review the code. Remove old access points. Then ask a skilled tester to try the locks. You may not like everything they find. That is why you hired them. 🌟Onward! In the next issue of the CF Alive newsletter, we’ll explore how to keep your legacy apps secure with the Zero Login principle. P.S. If your CF app is heading toward a pen test, send us a message teratech.com/contact/?utm_so… or DM. TeraTech’s ColdFusion team can help prepare the app, fix the findings, and close unsafe access points.

Cybersecurity Awareness Month: Your ColdFusion Patching and EOL Playbook Cybersecurity Awareness Month is a good time to ask: How old is the CF version running our critical apps? Old ColdFusion can run for years. That is part of its charm. It is also how a server quietly drifts past support. Until one day, a security issue pops up. Suddenly, the C-suite wants answers. What version of CF are we running? Is it still supported? Is it patched? How fast can the team act? It's exactly the wrong time to be asking those questions. Here's how to get ahead of the orcs trying to crash down your gates. 👉 If your CF patching or upgrade plan has gathered dust, explore TeraTech’s ColdFusion security services teratech.com/coldfusion-secu…. We help teams patch, secure, and maintain legacy CF apps before a security issue turns into a full quest. Step 1: Know what you are running Make a list of what you use. Include your ColdFusion version, updates, Java version, operating system, web server, database drivers, and key third-party libraries. Then check what still has support. A CF server can look healthy while sitting on old software underneath. Java may have moved on. The operating system may face its own end-of-life date. A forgotten library may carry a known flaw. One old stone in the wall can still leave a gap for an orc. Step 2: Treat patches as normal maintenance Have a clear plan for every security patch. Test it first. Use a short checklist. Pick someone to own the work. And have a rollback plan. Test the real parts of the CF app. Logins. Payments. Reports. Scheduled tasks. APIs. File uploads. Whatever keeps your business moving. Then patch production while the test results still mean something. Waiting six months can make the next patch harder. Several changes pile up. Java versions drift. Dependencies change. Nobody remembers why Gandalf left a note saying, “Do not upgrade this driver.” Small, regular moves make the road much easier. Step 3: Know your end-of-life dates Once a CF version reaches end of life, the risk starts to grow. New security fixes may no longer arrive. Old Java and operating systems can add more risk. Your security team may also start asking harder questions. Note: ColdFusion 2021: Core support ended last year. Final extended support concludes in November 2026. If you need help to upgrade then explore TeraTech’s ColdFusion security services teratech.com/coldfusion-secu… A useful plan begins months before the deadline. Test the newer CF version. Check old code and integrations. Fix weak spots. Practice the deployment. Make sure you can roll back. Step 4: Protect the app around CF too CF is only one part of the app. Check Java, the web server, and database access. Check operating system patches, TLS settings, admin access, and third-party packages too. Also remove things you no longer use. Old test sites, forgotten admin pages, unused datasources, and abandoned code create extra doors to guard. Mordor does not need the front gate if somebody left a side door open in 2017. Give the CIO one simple view Your CIO should be able to answer four questions without calling three developers. 1. What CF versions do we run? 2. Are they fully patched? 3. When does support end? 4. What is our upgrade plan? Patch often. Track support dates. Test upgrades early. Give old apps the care that lets them keep doing useful work without becoming ancient ruins. Cybersecurity Awareness Month lasts one month. Your CF patch plan needs to work all year. 🌟Onward! In the next issue of the CF Alive newsletter, we’ll explore pen testing CF apps. P.S. If your CF patch backlog looks like something buried beneath Moria, send us a message teratech.com/contact/?utm_so… or DM. TeraTech’s ColdFusion team can help review your versions, patch the weak spots, and build a safer upgrade path.

CF Summit East 2026: The ColdFusion Fellowship Heads Back to the DC area Pack the laptop. Find your conference shoes. The ColdFusion fellowship is gathering again. Adobe ColdFusion Summit East 2026 lands in Reston, Virginia, on October 29th. Just outside Wash DC and on the metro, it is easy to find. There is also an onsite workshop on October 28th. If you work with CF, this is a great chance to step away from your code and see what's next. And yes, there will be humans there. Real ones. Not just AI agents. 👉 If Summit East gets you thinking about what your CF app needs next, explore TeraTech’s ColdFusion development services teratech.com/coldfusion-deve…. We help teams turn good ideas into CF apps that are safer, faster, and easier to maintain. Two tracks, two different quests This year, Summit East splits into two tracks. The Adobe ColdFusion Core track covers the CF work teams do every day. Think performance, security, language updates, and ways to keep old apps healthy. The AI in Web Development track looks at the newer side of CF. You'll learn about native AI, Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG), and Model Context Protocol (MCP). You'll also see how AI can work in real apps. That mix makes sense. Most CF teams live in both worlds now. You may work on a 15-year-old billing app on Monday and test a new AI idea on Tuesday. Middleware-Earth contains multitudes. One day ColdFusion AI workshop Spend six hands-on hours learning how to turn your current applications into intelligent systems using the native power of ACF 2026. Totally without cost. You also get the roadmap One big reason to attend comes straight from Adobe. The team plans to share where ColdFusion goes next. That matters if you are a CIO planning an upgrade. It matters if you are a developer learning new skills. And it matters if your company keeps asking if CF has a future. You can hear the answer from the people building it. Adobe speakers include Mark Takata, Charvi Dhoot, and Vivek Kumar. You'll also hear from CF experts like Charlie Arehart, Dan Wilson, Justin Scott, and Nolan Erck. That is a lot of CF mileage in one room. Rivendell would charge admission. Production stories beat shiny demos The other big draw comes from the people who work on real CF apps. A clean demo always behaves. Production has other plans. CF Summit East lets you hear what worked and what didn't. You'll also hear about the strange things CF can do after years in the wild. Those lessons can save your own team weeks of wandering. Ask about performance problems. Ask about security. Ask how people handle AI without handing the keys to the kingdom to a model. Ask what broke during an upgrade. Someone in that room has probably fought the same orc. And talk to people This may be the most useful part. The event includes free breakfast and lunch. Great chance to mingle with other CFers! CF has a smaller community than many tech stacks. That makes the people in it more valuable. You can meet developers who have worked with CF for decades. You can talk to Adobe staff. And you can meet other teams dealing with old code and new demands. There is also a happy hour after the Summit. Because some architecture problems get easier after everybody reaches the Prancing Pony. Should you go? If CF still runs important parts of your business, yes. Send the developer who owns the app. Send the CIO trying to plan its future. Better yet, send both and compare notes afterward. You will come home with ideas. Pick two or three that solve real problems and put them on the roadmap. The conference gives you the map. You still have to walk the road. Adobe ColdFusion Summit East 2026 Reston, Virginia * October 29th, 2026 (free) * Onsite workshop: October 28th 2026 (free) Register here! govevents.com/event/29184/ad… 🌟Onward! In the next issue of the CF Alive newsletter, we’ll kick off cybersecurity awareness month with a patching and EOL playbook. P.S. If CF Summit East leaves you with a page full of CF ideas and no time to tackle them, send us a message teratech.com/contact/?utm_so… or DM. TeraTech's ColdFusion team can help you pick the best ideas and make a plan.

The Best CF Recruitment Tool Isn't LinkedIn. It's Your Codebase Let's say the perfect CF developer job exists. It offers fair pay, flexible hours, and fun work. Let's say that job is snagged by an ideal candidate. All seems alright. Then they see the codebase and lack of improvement roadmap. Their eyes go wide like Gollum's. And poof, they're gone. All the pay in the world won't bring them back. An old CF app tells a story. Tidy folders, useful comments, tests, source control, and clear steps all say, "People care." A jungle of copied code, mystery files, and manual steps says, "Fly, you fools!" 👉 Need more CF development help? Explore TeraTech’s teratech.com/coldfusion-deve… ColdFusion development services. We help teams care for old CF apps, clean up messy code, and add skilled CF developers. Developers are interviewing your app Good developers know old apps come with baggage. No one expects a 15-year-old CF app to look brand new. But they do want to see that your team can make it better. Think about two CF jobs with the same pay.  The first app has source control, a working local setup, code reviews, basic tests, useful docs, and a plan for old code. The second has a shared drive called “final_final2,” a production password known only by Steve, and a deployment process that begins with “Okay, whatever you do…” Which fellowship would you join? Messy code makes the job harder to sell Messy CF code makes life harder for a new developer. Before they can fix real problems, they have to work out how the old code works. They need to find hidden links and learn which parts are safe to change. That can turn a small ticket into a rough trip through Moria. And the problems don't stop there. Training takes longer. Work is harder to plan. Releases have more risk. Senior developers spend more time explaining why the code works this way. A new hire may start to wonder: Will I spend my time building new things? Or will I spend it digging through old code? Clean up the welcome mat Start with the parts a new developer will use first. Make the app easy to run on their computer. Put the code in source control. Write down how to deploy it. Explain the key business steps. Add tests around risky code. Clean up the most messy part of the app. Then show new hires what you're working to improve. Even write down a roadmap for the app. You're not just filling a job. You're showing them why they should work with you. An old app with a plan can be a great place to work. CF developers can solve real problems and make the system better. Even ancient ruins look better when someone hands you a map and a torch. Your codebase helps you keep them too Recruitment does not end on the developer’s first day. Keep making the CF code better after they join. Let them clean up bad code when they find it. Give them time to fix old problems, not just fix bugs. And reward that work. The person who fixes an old problem is just as useful as the person who ships a shiny new feature. An old CF app can still be a great place to work. The key is giving developers the time and support to make it better. So before you spend another month hunting LinkedIn for the perfect CF developer, look at your codebase. Is it a place they will want to work? Even Aragorn probably would have passed on a job where the onboarding plan was a shrug. 🌟Onward! In the next issue of the CF Alive newsletter, we’ll look at CF Summit East, which promises to be as good as any gathering at the prancing pony. P.S. If your CF codebase is making hiring and onboarding harder than it needs to be, send teratech.com/contact/?utm_so… us a message or DM. TeraTech’s ColdFusion team can help clean up the rough edges, share the workload, and make your app a better place for good developers to work.

Onboarding a New CF Developer: The Checklist That Saves the First 90 Days You finally found a CF developer. Woohoo! Now comes the hard part. The next step will decide how useful they'll be. They can hit the ground running fast. Or, they can spend three months lost in ancient CF code. If things are truly like Mordor, they'll be updating their LinkedIn profile during business hours. A good CF developer can learn your app, sure. They can learn your app much faster if they have a map. Most old CF apps have years of business rules, server quirks, and old links to other systems. They also have quick fixes that somehow became permanent. And they have strange bits of code that made perfect sense to someone in 2014. 👉 If you need more CF development capacity, explore TeraTech’s ColdFusion development services teratech.com/coldfusion-deve…. We help teams fill skill gaps, share legacy knowledge, and keep critical CF work moving while new developers get up to speed. Dropping a new hire into that alone is basically sending Frodo into Mordor with a Jira login. I've seen onboarding go both ways. You want to avoid the "Ask Steve" problem. This is when one CF wizard knows how everything works. Every question goes to Steve. Every odd bit of old CF code needs Steve. That's bad for the new hire, the team, and poor Steve. Here's a better plan. Week one: Give them the map 1. What does this CF app do? 2. Who uses it? 3. Which parts make money, serve customers, or keep staff working? 4. Where does the data come from? 5. Which parts of the app deserve extra care? Give the new developer a local setup that works. Make sure they can access the CF code, docs, test systems, and logs. Show them how you release a change. Then introduce them to the people who know the business rules. Next, show them the danger zones. Every old CF app has a few. Maybe one report takes forever. Maybe one scheduled task has seen things. Maybe the billing code sits behind a door marked, "Speak, friend, and enter." It's better to learn about those quirks on Monday than during a Friday release. The first 30 days: Give them real work Training is much easier when a CF developer can work on something real. Start with a small bug, report, or feature. Pair them with someone who knows the CF app. Let them find the code and make the change. Then let them test it and see how it gets released. This teaches them far more than a huge folder of old CF docs. It also means they don't have to ask Steve about everything. Use code reviews as training too. Explain why the app works the way it does. Show them the patterns you want to keep. Point out old patterns the team wants to stop using. The goal is simple. Help them learn how your team writes CF without making them decode every rune alone. Days 30 to 90: Spread the knowledge By now, the new CF developer should know their way around the app. It's time to give them more control. Let them take charge of a small part of the CF app. Give them time to write down what they learn. Let them make old tests better and clean up code that is hard to follow. They should also feel free to ask, "Why do we do it this way?" This is also the time to check the bus factor. Can they deploy without one person standing beside them? Do they know where the CF logs are? Can they trace a slow request? Do they know how the database fits into the app? Can they explain one important business CF workflow back to you? If the answer is still "ask Steve," your fellowship has more work to do. And poor Steve needs a vacation. The 90-day checklist By day 90, a new CF developer should have: * A development setup that works * Access to the code, docs, logs, and test systems * A clear view of the CF app's key business processes * Experience shipping real changes * Someone they can ask for help * A good idea of which parts of the CF app need extra care * The skills to take charge of a small part of the app A chance to make the docs better for the next new hire That last one matters. Good onboarding should make the next onboarding easier. Oh, and they should also buy Steve a coffee. 🌟Onward! In the next issue of the CF Alive newsletter, we’ll look at how your codebase can affect your hiring. P.S. Is your new CF developer spending more time hunting for answers than shipping code? They may need a better onboarding and support plan. Send us a message or DM teratech.com/contact/?utm_so… and TeraTech’s ColdFusion team will help transfer knowledge, fill the gaps, and get your developer working faster.

Why CF Developers Leave - And the One Change That Makes Them Stay CF developers often leave after years of fighting messy code, risky releases, repeat outages, and a backlog that never leaves time to fix the real problems. In other words: it’s usually not their fault. Every new CF  feature adds another plank to the bridge. Nobody gets time to fix the ropes. After a while, the developer gets tired of crossing Moria with a flashlight and a ticket queue. 👉 If your CF team is buried under legacy code and repeat maintenance work, explore TeraTech’s ColdFusion development services teratech.com/coldfusion-deve…. We help teams clean up fragile apps, reduce emergency work, and give developers a codebase they can improve. The slow drain of unreadable code Messy CF code makes every task harder. A small edit can affect five old files and create a pile of extra work. One business rule may show up in several places. A developer can spend hours tracing a bug, only to find a broken workaround written by someone who left during the Third Age. That pressure adds up. Estimates get harder because hidden CF problems keep changing the work. Releases take longer. Support tickets break up planned work. Then the team gets blamed for moving slowly while the code keeps tying their boots together. A good CF developer can handle difficult code. Fighting the same tech debt mess every week gets old fast. The culture change that matters Make maintainability part of the job. Give developers time to improve the CF code as they work. Let them add tests, remove dead code, write down business rules, break huge functions into smaller pieces, and replace risky manual steps. Then reward that work. Most teams celebrate new features. Cleanup gets far less attention, even when it prevents the next outage. CF developers notice what gets praised and what gets pushed aside. A healthier CF culture values the person who ships a feature and leaves the road safer for the next traveler. What this looks like in practice Set aside time for maintenance and tech debt reduction. Give the team clear CF coding rules and the power to use them. Make code reviews, cross-training, and documentation part of the normal work. Leaders should also ask better questions. Stuff like: * Which part of the CF app eats the most time each month? * Which files make developers nervous? * Which problem keeps coming back? * Where does one person hold knowledge the rest of the fellowship needs? Those answers give you a cleanup plan. Start with the code causing the most pain, risk, or emergency work. A full rewrite can stay deep in the Lonely Mountain. Your team can make useful improvements now. Why developers stay Developers stay where they can do good work. They want CF code they can understand, teammates who share knowledge, and time to make the app better. They want leaders who see maintenance as real work with real value. Give them that kind of workplace, and an old CF app can become a challenge worth solving instead of a curse. The code may still contain ancient runes. Give your CF developers the tools and time to translate them. 🌟Onward! In the next issue of the CF Alive newsletter, we’ll look at how to properly onboard a developer during their first three months. P.S. If unreadable code and repeat emergencies are wearing down your CF team, it might be time for a maintenance plan. Send us a message teratech.com/contact/?utm_so… or DM, and TeraTech’s ColdFusion team will help reduce the mess, spread the knowledge, and give your developers room to build again.

IT Professionals Day: What ColdFusion Developers Wish Their CIOs Understood IT Professionals Day is a good time to thank the people keeping your CF apps alive. They fix bugs, calm outages, answer strange tickets, and carry years of business knowledge through ancient code. Unfortunately, many CIOs don’t notice that until the person doing it leaves. Then what? The CF talent market can feel thin. CIOs search for someone with the right years, the right platform, the right database, and knowledge of one very specific application stack. In the end, the job description reads like a call for the lost heir of Gondor. 👉 If your CF team needs more development capacity, explore TeraTech’s ColdFusion development services teratech.com/coldfusion-deve… to see how we help companies maintain critical apps, modernize old code, and fill skill gaps without waiting months for the perfect hire. Here is what many CF developers wish their CIOs understood. Strong developers can learn CF A good developer brings more than a list of CF versions. They understand clean code, testing, databases, security, APIs, and how to trace a problem through a system. Those habits are mithril. A good Java, PHP, .NET, or JavaScript developer with solid fundamentals can learn CF quite easily. Pair them with someone who knows the app, give them a safe first project to test their knowledge, and let them ship real work. The long road ahead gets much shorter when you hire for judgment and curiosity instead of documented skills. The app knowledge matters as much as the language A senior CF developer can learn syntax quickly. The harder part lives inside years of business rules. Why does this report work differently in March? Why does one customer follow a special billing path? Why does nobody touch that scheduled task after lunch? That knowledge often lives in one person’s head like a secret map to Mordor. A new CF hire needs documentation, pairing time, and access to the people who understand the business. Without that support, even a brilliant developer spends months digging through old runes. Developers want a system they can improve CF developers know legacy apps come with sharp edges. They can handle that. Trouble starts when every idea for cleanup, testing, automation, or monitoring gets pushed aside forever. Good CF developers want room to leave the app better than they found it. Give them time to remove dead code, add tests, improve deployments, and document what they learn. Hero culture drives good people away One CFdeveloper should not own every deployment, outage, database mystery, and late-night restart. That may look efficient for a while, but the burden gets heavy. Build a fellowship instead. Share system knowledge. Rotate support. Document the dangerous steps. Bring in outside CF help when the internal team runs out of time or experience. Developers stay longer when every vacation does not feel like a threat to production. Hiring gets easier when the job sounds survivable CF developers can spot chaos in a job description. “Must own the full legacy platform” often means one person will inherit years of risk with little help. Be honest about the CF app. Explain the roadmap. Show what support exists. Talk about testing, deployments, documentation, and modernization. A clear path attracts better people than a shiny list of tools. IT Professionals Day should celebrate the people doing this work. It should also remind leaders that talented CF developers need support, time, and a team. Hire for strong habits. Transfer the business knowledge. Give developers room to improve the system. 🌟Onward! In the next issue of the CF Alive newsletter, we’ll take a look at the opposite problem: why CF developers leave. P.S. If your CF app depends on one tired developer or a hiring search that never ends, it might be time for extra support. Send us a message teratech.com/contact/?utm_so… or DM, and TeraTech’s ColdFusion team will help maintain the app, share the load, and keep critical work moving.

The ColdFusion 2026 Features AI Shouldn’t Overshadow AI gets the bright banners in ColdFusion 2026 (aka CF 2026 Update 8, as we’ve already covered linkedin.com/posts/abundantm…. Some of the best upgrade reasons sit farther down the list. Adobe also improved CFML, security, performance, and error handling. Teams also get better monitoring, documentation, and Visual Studio Code support. These changes may lack a talking robot, but they touch the work CF teams perform every day. Sometimes it’s the little unassuming hobbits that end up saving the Fellowship. 👉 If your CF app needs safer code, stronger security, or better performance, explore TeraTech’s ColdFusion maintenance services teratech.com/coldfusion-main…. We help teams tune, patch, test, and modernize critical applications without tearing down the Shire to install better plumbing. CFML gets less awkward. CF 2026 adds native Sets. They reject duplicate values. They also support union, intersection, difference, and membership checks. That helps with permissions, feature flags, security rules, segments, tags, and any code that has spent years pretending an array was a Set. Ancient helper functions may now enjoy a peaceful retirement. Async work also gets stronger through Java’s CompletableFuture. New coordination and timeout options help independent tasks run at the same time. Teams also get more control over timeouts. A CF request that calls a database, an API, and an AI service can manage that work more cleanly. Adobe also improved how CF works with Java. It added better support for callbacks, member functions, and built-in functions. Each change removes a little glue code. Across a large CF app, those small cuts can clear a surprising amount of bramble. Performance gains reach existing apps. Query of Queries receives a large performance boost, reported at about 11 times faster in Adobe’s release material. Async work is also faster. CF also works better with Java. These gains matter because teams can benefit without adding AI. A mature CF app may gain more from a faster report, cleaner background work, or reduced runtime friction than it would from a chatbot wearing a tiny Gandalf hat. The update also fixes how Query of Queries handles operators. This brings it closer to standard SQL. Teams should still test code that relied on the old order. Security reaches several layers. CF now supports passkeys through WebAuthn and FIDO2. Teams can also use Argon2 for stronger password hashing. The Security Analyzer adds checks and improved reporting, while AI guardrails help validate model inputs and outputs. Error handling also gets better. CF teams can deliberately enable reserved exception types such as Database, Security, Template, and Lock. Teams can then see what kind of error occurred. That beats meeting a mystery error in a dark server room at 2 a.m. These tools support better CF security work. They still need patching, testing, code review, access control, and a proper deployment plan. Mithril remains useful even when you own a shield. Tooling and monitoring grow up. The ColdFusion Builder extension for VS Code now supports Linux and Docker. It also improves CFML grammar, code completion, and Security Analyzer support. Adobe’s new documentation platform improves search and includes its own MCP server for supported development tools. The Performance Monitoring Tool also gets an AI Services dashboard. Teams can track models, agents, RAG, MCP, vector stores, and traces. That visibility matters when one CF request crosses several systems. Teams can follow the path instead of staring at one slow screen and consulting the stars. The larger modernization lesson. Modernization can happen in layers. A CF team can improve security, monitoring, deployments, and developer tools. They can do this while keeping business logic that already works. That path is often faster and safer than a full CF rewrite. The old house can keep its stories while receiving locks, wiring, plumbing, and fewer mysterious noises beneath the floor. 🌟Onward! In the next issue of the CF Alive newsletter, we’ll share the deep truths CF developers wish they could tell their bosses. P.S. If your CF app could benefit from faster code, stronger security, and modern tooling, it might be time for an CF 2026 assessment. Send us a message teratech.com/contact/?utm_so… or DM and TeraTech’s ColdFusion team will help you find the upgrades that deliver value without waking every creature beneath the mountain.

The New ColdFusion AI Stack: LLMs, RAG, and MCP Without a Rewrite ColdFusion teams can now add powerful AI features to the apps they already manage. Adobe ColdFusion 2026 (aka CF 2025 Update 8) linkedin.com/pulse/adobe-col…, added a model-independent framework to CFML for OpenAI, Anthropic, Google Gemini, Mistral AI, Azure OpenAI, and Ollama. It also added native RAG and vector database support. And you get MCP, guardrails, memory, streaming, structured output, and monitoring. The AI robot has entered Middleware-earth. Happily, it arrived with some rules. 👉 If your company wants to explore AI inside an existing CF app, visit TeraTech’s ColdFusion modernization services teratech.com/coldfusion-mode…. We help teams choose useful AI projects, protect sensitive workflows, and avoid building a costly second stack beside the first one. One CF framework, several AI providers Enterprise AI changes fast. Prices move. Models improve. Privacy rules tighten. One use case may fit a pay per token hosted model, while another needs token-free Ollama running inside your own infrastructure. ColdFusion now gives developers a shared framework for those choices. ChatModel() handles direct prompt-and-response work. agent() supports longer conversations, memory, tool calls, streaming, structured output, and guardrails. That flexibility matters because a test project rarely stays small. Today’s document summary can become tomorrow’s support assistant, workflow tool, or customer service feature. Built-in AI guardrails make it safe. A common CF layer makes it easier to switch providers.. You don’t have to rebuild the road each time. RAG puts company knowledge to work Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) helps AI answer questions using your own content. ColdFusion can load and split your documents. It can create embeddings and store them in a vector RAG database. Then it can find the right passages and build an answer. Supported vector stores include Pinecone, Milvus, Qdrant, Chroma, and an in-memory option. That opens practical doors. A support team can search technical manuals. Staff can question policy documents. Sales teams can find facts buried across product files and client notes. The answer can point back to its source, which helps users judge whether the wizard knows his lore or is simply making up runes. RAG gives existing document archives a second life. The folder everyone avoids can become a useful business tool. MCP gives the AI approved tools Model Context Protocol lets AI take approved actions. It lets AI find and use specific tools. A CF app can connect to outside MCP servers. It can also expose selected ColdFusion Component methods as tools to AIs via MCP. That might include fetching an approved customer summary, checking invoice status, creating a support ticket, or generating a report. The boundary matters. The AI gets a specific tool with clear rules and permissions. It does not need the keys to the whole kingdom. That makes MCP valuable for governance. CF teams can control each tool. They can add security, logging, approvals, and access rules. The model may suggest an action, while CF business logic decides what can truly happen. Start with one useful job Choose a small CF workflow with clear value and low risk. Document search is often a good first quest. Decide what data it can use. Set access rules, cost limits, and clear goals. Then monitor the full path. AI requests can touch a model, vector database, retrieved files, MCP tools, and outside services. ColdFusion’s Performance Monitoring Tool now helps teams trace those steps and see where time, errors, and cost appear. AI inside CF can be useful, controlled, and close to the systems your team already understands. Give the ranger a map, clear orders, and a locked door to accounting. 🌟Onward! In the next issue of the CF Alive newsletter, we’ll look at the CFML, security, performance, monitoring, and developer-tooling upgrades hiding behind the AI headlines. P.S. If your CF team has an AI idea but no safe path into production, it might be time for a focused pilot. Send us a message or DM teratech.com/contact/?utm_so… and TeraTech’s ColdFusion team will help you choose the use case, set the guardrails, and build it inside the CF app you already trust.