Here I go. My attempt to create the greatest article I've yet to write up. This will encompass most or all of my years of programming experience into a "how-to" creating the ultimate Coldfusion application using the most advanced MVC framework, components, and CF OOP techniques I can fathom. No short cuts, from the ground up, including planning, coding, testing, implimenting, and maintaining. If anything would get me a job, this would be it. This is what I know how to do and as good as I can do it. Oh, except that I added Flex RIA development to my list about a year ago, about 6 professional applications under my belt now.

I'm not even sure how many parts this will be as I will be working on it little by little. But here is the game plan for this article series. It will include just about everything except for maybe user documentation (help files etc..). I will also try to be as thorough as possible with proper programming, I don't want some kid reading this to be ruined with improper teaching, though I don't concider this a class. Always keep in mind that there's more than one way to achieve any result, the best way depends on the person.

1. Discuss and come up with an application perfect for this article.
2. Setting up Coldfusion and MySQL. Learn about Coldfusion instances.
3. Gathering requirements
4. Planning (Formal development documentation, UML models, etc..) and why.
5. Discuss the planned framework
6. Designing the layout with Fireworks
7. Laying the application foundation (application.cfc, configs, error handeling, directory structure, etc..)
8. Coding the backend, aka. business or model layer. (DAOs, VOs, TOs, beans, gateways, controllers, etc..)
9. Laying the View on top of the Backend with speed and precision. Focusing on the user experience.
10. Using a testing script (not code) to follow in testing all parts of the application. Load testing not included.
11. Maintaining the application. Hopefully you done so well that a Maytag repairman would be proud. (ha ha, old commercial, I'm 38)

Ok, that's it for today. Reading the plan above you should have an idea about pre-planning now if you didn't before. BTW, an application is also a web site. Web sites can also have multiple applications. Depends how you look at it and use it in the context of a sentence.

Last notes: This is not meant to be used for learning Coldfusion or any programming. This is for experienced and seasoned veterans interested in learning yet another way to creating Coldfusion applications from another seasoned veteran. It's just my way of showing you how I like to do it.

Part 2

Sounds great - looking forward to learning!

Great idea. I look forward to reading your posts.

do you already have an idea of what application you are going to build?

I'm thinking about ideas tonight while I'm watching my weekly Jerico and Lost shows. I'll have it formulated by tomorrow and will unveil it then. I'm thinking of something original but catchy. Maybe a space ship parts store or something. It has to fit into the scheme of everything I want to cover so it has to have things like users, login, memberships, products, shopping carts, etc.. But not too grand that it would take too much to cover. After all, this is about HOW I develop apps, not about the app itself. Stay tuned.