After my last post (about my blog's move) generated a whopping 3 views (possibly all by me!), I began to believe that my suspicions that RSS readers may not like HTTP 302 redirects might be well-founded. So I checked out Full As a Goog and sure enough, it wasn't showing my new post some many hours after I posted it.

So I did a little digging into the matter of redirecting RSS feeds and I found that an HTTP 302 redirect (which is what I was using) should temporarily redirect the feed. I'm not sure why that wasn't working.

But it doesn't really matter because I don't truly want a temporary redirect, I want a permanent redirect. For that it appears there are two choices: use an HTTP 301 redirect or use an XML level redirect (further info on both is given at the above link). It is possible to generate either using ColdFusion (for the former, you would use <cfheader> and for the latter you just put the appropriate XML into your RSS XML output). The latter struck me as a more interesting approach so that is the one I am now using.

Does it work? I'm not sure--you tell me! If you were consuming the feed from its old location at http://www.joshuaadams.com/blog and your reader is now consuming the feed from its new location at http://blog.joshuaadams.com then yep, it worked for you. But if you're still showing the old feed, then no, it isn't working for you (although that then begs the question of how you ended up here). Comments letting me know if it worked for you are appreciated; comments letting me know it didn't work for you are even more appreciated.

I have made a slight change in the location of my blog: previously it was at http://www.joshuaadams.com/blog and now it can be found at http://blog.joshuaadams.com.

So is that old location given above now a broken link? Nope--if you hit a page in its old location, you will be redirected to its new location. Note that this is true not just for the main page of the blog but for any page. How does it work? Just a few lines of code for ColdFusion 8. Stay tuned for more details....

What I'm not sure about is how consumers of RSS feeds will react to this change--the RSS feed isn't present in its old location but requests for it in its old location will be redirected to its new location. However, I'm not sure how well readers will handle this. Please leave me a comment and let me know how yours does.

Lest I become one of those people who has a blog but never posts:

ColdFusion has more great features than you realize. Well, okay, I can't legimately claim to know what you realize. But as I am coming up to speed in my job as ColdFusion Specialist, it strikes me just how many great features there are in ColdFusion 8. And my guess is I'm not the only one who would have that reaction.

Rather than expound on all these great features myself, let me instead point you to adobe.com for this list of new features in ColdFusion 8. In time I expect to post additional information and code samples for some of these features. Are you interested in learning more about any features in particular? If so, post a comment and let me know!

I am pleased to announce that I have accepted a Systems Engineer position in the role of ColdFusion Specialist with Adobe Systems, Inc. I am excited about working for Adobe and about the role as ColdFusion Specialist. What has me so jazzed up? Getting to work with ColdFusion (and also Flex, AIR, LiveCycle, and the many other great tools from Adobe) and at the same time with you, the ColdFusion user. I love ColdFusion, but what I love even more is working with ColdFusion users as they do new, better, bigger, and innovative things with ColdFusion! And that's exactly what I have been hired to do.

Over the past several years, I have had the pleasure of getting to know so many in the ColdFusion user community at conferences, user group meetings, and other events. I'm excited for this opportunity to focus on continuing those relationships and forging new ones. Because for me, that's the greatest thing about my job: I am here for you! If there is anything that you need from Adobe in regards to ColdFusion, I'm your man. So don't be shy--get in touch! I'm still in ramp up mode so I'm not going to list contact information here, but you can simply add a comment to this post or use the Contact link at the bottom of the page to send me a message. I look forward to hearing from you soon!

One more thing: not to make this sound too much like an awards acceptance speech, but the reality is that there are a number of people who deserve my thanks for their role in helping me get to the point where I was able to land this position. But rather than try to cover them all and risk missing any, I will instead turn my thanks to the Atlanta ColdFusion User Group as so many of those deserving my thanks are people I know through my involvement in ACFUG. Thanks ACFUG and those I know because of it--I appreciate you! If you're reading this and you're serious about your career and you're not attending meetings of your local user group, you need to start. If there is no local user group, you need to start one. And another great option--and the place to turn if absolutely no one lives near you such that any user group you would start would be a user group of one--is the Online ColdFusion Meetup.

Look, there are exceptions to every rule, but generally, quality costs money--and the more quality, the more money it costs.

Today I was asked if I could DJ for 60% less than my minimum price for a wedding reception. My response in short was yes--if the budget is a shoestring with the event at a rec center and the frills at a minimum. I said, however, that if she is willing and able to pay for a nice venue, nice food, nice flowers, and so on, then if she wants me to DJ for her, she's also going to have to pay my rate, the rate of a nice DJ. The truth is that, from the perspective of my materials costs, I could justify the lower price. However, time is a precious resource: if I'm doing a job for you, how much time it takes me is an important consideration in how much I charge for that job. And I invest a large amount of time in DJing a wedding reception because that's what it takes to do it right. Now, that doesn't mean that anyone has to be willing to pay me what I ask. But people hire me. And they do pay me what I ask because they understand that quality costs money and what I'm asking is a great price for the value I deliver. (NOTE: again, there are exceptions to the "quality costs money" rule; for instance, maybe this particular prospect can find a DJ of equal or better quality for the price she wants to pay. But any DJ who charges what she wants and delivers quality on par with what I deliver is, in all truth, doing bad business--he/she isn't charging enough for his/her services...and time!)

What's this have to do with ColdFusion? Well, it reminds me of a great blog post about ColdFusion (see--you thought I'd put this post in the wrong category, didn't you?) from Jason Delmore. Give it a read if you haven't already.

Are you one of those people who does some of his/her best thinking in the shower? I am. And for longer than I can remember, every now and then, I've had a thought to which my response was "hey--I need to put up a blog so I can post about that." Today's thought? "I have a blog now--I can post that!" Of course, now I can't remember what any of those other thoughts were. ;)