We are announcing today a contest that will really give you some nice additions to your holiday presents, a cool Kinlde Fire and an iPod nano! This contest is available to all you ColdFusion folks or non-ColdFusion folks that can now have an excuse to try ColdFusion and ColdBox, create a cool application and win big! So here are the rules:

ColdBox 3.5.0 BETA Modules Contest

Create a ColdBox 3.5.0 module that is a fully functional application that can be portable for any ColdBox 3.5.0 BETA application. Here are some guidelines the ColdBox team will be evaluating the module on:

• Download ColdBox 3.5.0 BETA
• The code must reside on either github or a public repository so it is publicly accessible
• The user must create a forgebox entry and submit the module code to it: http://coldbox.org/forgebox
• The more internal libraries it uses the more points it gets: LogBox, MockBox, WireBox, CacheBox
• The module should do something productive, no say hello modules accepted
• If you create unit tests, integration tests, the more points you get
• You are encouraged to use ColdFusion ORM to get more points
• If you use our new ColdBox Hibernate Criteria Buidler, you get more points
• Make use of any of the cool new ColdBox 3.5.0 Beta features: http://wiki.coldbox.org/wiki/WhatsNew:3.5.0.cfm
• Best practices on MVC separation of concerns
• Portability
• Documentation (You had that one coming!!) as it might need DB setup or DSN setup
• Must use either: Adobe ColdFusion 9, Railo Latest or Open BlueDragon 2.0
• Be creative!
• Make sure it works!
• * Shipping is included for USA, UK and certain parts of Europe.

Deadline: Module entries must be submitted by December 16th December 18th no later than 11PM PST to contests@ortussolutions.com

Winners Announced on December 19th, 2011
1st Prize

• Amazon Kindle Fire

2nd Prize

• iPod Nano 16gb

So that is 3 weeks from now folks, so get to it, coding starts now!

ColdBox Newbie?

If you are a beginner to ColdBox and need direction we have an incredible amount of resources for you and here are the best places to start:

• Become part of our mailing list: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/coldbox this is the best place to get help!
• ForgeBox is an incredible repository of plugins, interceptors, tools, etc: http://coldbox.org/forgebox
• If you use ColdFusion Builder (Which we recommend! You can also use the free express version, yes free!) we have the ColdBox Platform Utilities extension that makes ColdBox development really easy!
• Have our API quickdocs bookmarked or use the ColdFusion Builder extension to have them searchable right from within Builder: http://apidocs.coldbox.org/
• Look at our entire video learning library: http://vimeo.com/album/1649497
• Installing ColdBox well, we need to install it right!
• ColdBox Overview so you can get an overall feel of the platform
• Application Directory Structure & Conventions
• Event Handlers
• The Request Context
• URL Mapping & Rewriting
• Layouts and Rendering in ColdBox
• Then you can get as fancy as you like: http://wiki.coldbox.org/
• Good luck!