When Spectra was first released, CFDJ devoted a lot of editorial space to it. To say the least, we didn't receive the most positive feedback to articles on software that ran on top of ColdFusion, required an additional expenditure, and at first didn't fit into many people's development plans. Due to this response, we scaled back our coverage. As time went on, however, the trend started to turn, and we began receiving letters saying the opposite - asking us for more information on Spectra. In response to that is this month's focus issue.

Content management is something that everyone developing a large site has to consider at one point or another, and Spectra's content management features are certainly some of its best and most used highlights. For all those using them, as with any similar tools, one of the largest challenges is optimizing it and keeping it running smoothly.

Read on for David Anderson's fantastic piece on the subject, which details how to use Squid, a third-party solution to cache pages in RAM, greatly lightening the load on your Web server. If you run your own Web server, as we do here at CFDJ, I certainly don't need to get into the advantages.

With the merger complete between Macromedia and Allaire, the next several months will bring increased integration between the two companies' formerly separate product lines. In this issue we bring you the first in a series of articles that will keep you up to date on the changes. Matt Tatam has written a fantastic overview on how to use Flash's abilities to dynamically communicate with server-side applications to set up graphical interaction with remote, data-based information. The article details how to effectively implement the "Model View Control Pattern," integrating it with Spectra's Site Layout Model, which is stored as an XML object. This feature really does cover it all.

Ray Camden weighs in with a comprehensive update on what's new with Spectra 1.5. The .5 is quite misleading in that it's a major update with several new features for productivity, caching, content versioning, authoring, and more. Also, when you get to the end of the article, you'll get a tiny peek at the next version of Spectra, coming soon to a server near you.

ColdFusion 5.0
And speaking of new software - this month we take our first official feature look at the newest version of the ColdFusion Application Server. It's got loads of enhancements that we've been hearing about for months - things like new tags, the ability to query a query, and a superb new scripting ability. That's just the beginning of it, though, with built-in graphing support and more new features than you can shake a stick at. The first of many articles on CF 5.0, it's a good overview of what Macromedia has done with the product since 4.5. I don't think you'll be disappointedŠ.Read the article as you're on your way to buy it.

CFDJ: The Complete Works
I want to close this month's editorial with a quick, shameless, commercial plug. Now available for purchase at JDJStore.com is CFDJ: The Complete Works, a CD collection of every article ever published in the magazine. Indexed by yours truly, the CD contains over 250 articles organized by category in an easily printable format. Also included is the source code for every article and PDFs of each issue. Best of all, it's completely searchable. Check it out, it's worth a look.