Over the last four months, I haven't been blogging; instead, I've been developing new features for Galaxie Blog.
I love the application development process. I find the process both relaxing and engaging. Typically, when I don't blog, I am busy working on coding something new. I didn't blog for nearly a year while I was developing Galaxie Blog 3.0. Unfortunately, this hurt my SEO, and after the lack of posting, my new posts were no longer covered by some ColdFusion community news sites. I can easily be distracted and prioritize development over writing new blog content, especially after AI reduced my blog traffic in the last year. Finding a balance between writing content and developing is difficult, and if I have not blogged for a while, I am probably cooking up new blog features.
I have been working on several major features for Galaxie Blog that should come out in the next few months.
  • First, I have introduced pages. Pages allow blog owners to create pages that serve as the foundational, user-facing building blocks of a Content Management System, acting as the primary containers that organize and deliver evergreen content. Since the last version in the spring, every display element in Galaxie Blog is editable and database-driven, and having page functionality now makes Galaxie Blog a fully featured content management system.
  • I recoded the site and have made the main index pages much more modular. Site owners can easily add new blogs or pages in other ColdFusion or Lucee applications by extending the original blog location.
  • I also added extensive logging. The next version will log all traffic, along with the pages and blogs that are read. Additionally, I am logging all logins, search queries, and site errors. The new error logging will also capture errors and send diagnostics to the blog developer (to me) only if the site owner enables diagnostics. Any diagnostics sent to the blog developer will also be cc'ed to the site owner if the site owner allows diagnostics.
  • In the next version, blog owners can automatically block a user's IP address or account when they try to visit or submit a specific restricted web address, path, or link. I've noticed many bots trying to see whether a site can be compromised by hitting known libraries with known security issues.
  • I am developing new widgets that capture feedback, such as adding star rating widgets at the end of each blog post to better understand which content resonates most with the blog audience.

I hope to finish the new version in the coming months; more to come...