This is mostly for my own reference...isn't that how most blog posts start these days? :)

As some of you know, when I'm not busy with consulting, I play music in a variety of projects. Earlier I needed to update the meta "keywords" and "description" for my band's website (currently running Mura 5.5) -- the meta data is the same for every page across the site, so I was looking for one site-wide place where I can make such a change. My first thought was "there's probably a site-wide setting for that in the Mura Admin", but after poking around for a few minutes, that didn't seem to be the case. I suppose it's possible that the meta data is hard-coded into the site theme (though unlikely), so let's check there. Mura has a site-specific directory where it stores the themes, like so:

/[sitename]/includes/themes/[theme name]

...and underneath there, you'll find a variety of files composing that theme (css, images, some CF templates for headers/footers, etc). Among these is html_head.cfm which contains all the things you'd typically find in the section of a website, and in there we find:

<meta name="description" content="#HTMLEditFormat($.getMetaDesc())#" />
<meta name="keywords" content="#HTMLEditFormat($.getMetaKeywords())#" />

....Okay, so the meta data isn't hard-coded, and there isn't a site-wide setting for it either. After a bit more searching, I found this link discussing "converting a third-party theme to a Mura theme" (not the most obvious of places for info about meta data, but hey it contains the answers I needed). About halfway down the page is this blurb:

Notes: Unless you specify otherwise on a specific page, Meta data content cascades down to the content nodes below. This means you don't have to set the meta data content on every page unless you specifically want to.

So let's to back to Mura Site Manager...my site content is laid out like so:

As you can see, everything is below "Home", so let's click on "Home", then go to "Meta Data" and add the new keywords and description.

Success! So although the answer I needed was listed as part of "converting third-party themes", the answer applies to pretty much any theme in Mura, regardless of where it came from. As long as the theme html_head.cfm file includes these lines:

<meta name="description" content="#HTMLEditFormat($.getMetaDesc())#" />
<meta name="keywords" content="#HTMLEditFormat($.getMetaKeywords())#" />...this should work just fine.

-Nolan

Tomorrow (January 10) at the Sacramento ColdFusion User Group, I'll be giving a demo of the Template Method Design Pattern. This is a really useful technique when dealing with things like vendor or client-specific versions of an algorithm in your application.

Also note, this will be the first meeting at our new location! The fine folks at AcademyX (180 Promenade Circle, Sacramento, CA) have agreed to host us for a while.

More details are available at the SACCFUG website.

Hope to see you there!
-nolan

I was very pleased to receive an email last week stating that my presentation got approved, and now it's official...I'm speaking at this year's cf.Objective conference in Minneapolis!

I'll be giving my talk on "Intro to Model View Controllers Without A Framework" that I gave at NCDevCon in September (as well as a few local user groups). If you're still not quite sure what to make of CFComoponents, or what all the fuss is about with MVC frameworks like Model-Glue or ColdBox, then this is the place to be. This will be an updated version of my talk, including more info on "Service Layers", and probably some additional sample code too.

Two years ago was my first trip to cf.Objective (I couldn't make it last year); it was a great experience. I'm hoping to meet more people in the CF community, and am especially looking forward to the Arm Wrestling BoF Session. :)

See you there!
-Nolan

2011 was a busy year for us, to say the least. South of Shasta grew and grew, hiring extra developers, taking on more projects, bigger projects, learning new technologies (or delving further into things we already knew). I spoke at NCDevCon (and got stranded in Texas for a day while trying to get home), spent a week at Adobe MAX in Los Angeles, spoke at various local user groups, and lucked into a last minute ticket to MuraCon where I learned more about Mura CMS than I ever thought possible.

Now it's 2012, and like many out there, South of Shasta has its own set of new year resolutions we plan on sticking with -- one of which is to keep this blog updated on a regular basis. There are lots of new things in the works we're excited to share with you all. I'll be speaking at the cf.Objective conference in May, some open source projects are in the works, and our friends at the Sacramento ColdFusion User Group have changes coming that we'll be sharing with you as well.

We're starting the new year off with a few UI updates to the website. You'll notice a new "jobs" page in the main navigation, and some other UI enhancements, hopefully making it easier to find info around here (which will become more and more useful as new blog articles and other content is added in the coming months). If you notice any issues with the site, please drop us a line.

I'm looking forward to all that 2012 has to offer and sharing it via the blog as much as possible.

Happy new year.

Nolan Erck / South of Shasta