Previously, I didn’t have any real handle on ColdFusion’s penetration into the UK market, in fact statistically i still don’t. I recently spent time with Goss Interactive looking at their content management product, ControlSite. I’d never heard of the product before moving to my new job thinking i’d seen most of the ColdFusion content management systems on the market. Goss have built up an impressive client list ranging from district councils, health, travel, construction, education - the list goes on…..all running under ColdFusion, it turns out even my local council is running on their product!!!
I’m not sure why i thought that CF wasn’t all that big over here, probably down to the fact that the majority of people you see posting on various lists are from the USA and it’s rare to see fellow UKanians posting - could it be they’re such super developers they don’t need to ask questions?
Anyway - it’s certainly encouraging to discover the take up of CF in the UK is larger than i’d imagined, who knows - with the next release it’s likely to grow even bigger….
January 8th, 2005 at 1:35 pm
Googling for "inurl:.cfm site:.uk" gives over 9 million results. Pretty good, comparing to .com or other countries TLD results.
January 8th, 2005 at 3:03 pm
Unfortunately there are no screenshots or somewhat of a presentation, or impression of the cm product.
January 8th, 2005 at 3:12 pm
yep, that is a problem - i found that before I’d actually seen the product myself, no screenshots on their site at all. In fact i don’t recall seeing any reference to ‘ControlSite’. It’s not the most polished looking UI either, if you saw the UI you’d probably overlook the product altogher if you’re used to UI’s like in Farcry, CommonSpot, Shado etc. It does make up for it in functionality though…
January 8th, 2005 at 8:10 pm
I think the main reason that most UK people don’t post on the standard lists is that there’s a very good mailing list associated with the UK cfug. Since that’s in the same timezone as all the other UK people they tend to use that rather than the ones in the US wher the majority of the users are on US time.
January 9th, 2005 at 4:18 am
I’m interested in the comparison of the UK cf community Vs the australian one (I couldn’t survive without cfaussie or fullasagoog).
in the UK there’s Russ Michaels CF-developer (which has roughly the same traffic as cfaussie).
aparently there’s an aggregator thru ukcfug.org (but it seems to be down ATM…)
anything else?
thanx
barry.b
January 9th, 2005 at 5:47 am
John, it’s funny that you mention your local council Mole Valley’s website - we (jobsgopublic.com) actually power their jobs listings at surreyjobs.info using our own ColdFusion system. Even better, it uses Fusebox! It’s one of about 50 similar sites we run around the country for county councils, universities, schools, charities and other public-sector companies.
I think CF is out there, quietly and effectively running sites up and down the country, but without all the fanfare and hype of other platforms. Vive la résistance!
January 11th, 2005 at 4:06 am
Hi
It has got very good functionality and in general the guys at Goss are very good.
But they do need a serious redesign of their UI though, and allow customers to customise it if they wish.
My 2p
Mark
January 11th, 2005 at 5:25 am
I believe the UI redesign is in the works now. If you look at the Gossinteractive.com site there’s no mention of ControlSite anywhere, just this ICM system (another dual purpose acronym!!). I did hint to them that their UI is rather dated…
January 11th, 2005 at 8:27 am
they had a site facelift late last year and any reference to Controlsite suddenly disapeared and ICM appeared…..
My favourite feature with controlsite/ICM is the Controlsite API, which is very well featured and well structured. Some of the flash/cf integration is excellent also.
As well as a face lift they could also do with redesigning their object, section & forms interface. Its a bit to complicated for non technical users.
January 11th, 2005 at 8:34 am
my only gripe so far is that they haven’t embraced the new technology introduced in CFMX - CFCs etc, they provide for a much more extensible API as opposed to custom tags. Almost all the other CF CMS’s went CFC based pretty soon after CFMX launched but it sounds like Goss aren’t willing to commit to them, which is kinda odd…especially when Blackstone is just around the corner!
January 11th, 2005 at 8:44 am
Yep
Would have to agree to that gripe, its a little bit short sighted. But as the API cannot be enhanced by users anyway, they might decide its not worth the hassle.
Another that I have is that the database deployment for all databases (no stored procs). This leaves it open to performance issues which in theory it could easily have, with it being marketed as an enterprise level system.
January 22nd, 2005 at 3:48 am
Your link to goss is invalid (missing a letter C)