A new year means focusing on new priorities and projects. With that in mind, we wanted to give FORGEBOX® the spotlight it deserves. Our goal is to make your job and your life easier, that’s why we have decided to bring down our pricing considerably!

 

 

 

 

What is FORGEBOX and CommandBox?

 

FORGEBOX® is a cloud package repository and software directory for ColdFusion (CFML).  CommandBox® is a command line interface (CLI), package manager and application server.  Both work in unison to bring you modernization at multiple levels for ColdFusion (CFML) and even Java development.  By leveraging modern techniques of package management, collaboration and binary distribution, your organization or yourself can focus on building great software and not worrying about how to consume or distribute your binaries; whether they are public or private.

 

 

FORGEBOX® Consumers

 

Below you can see a diagram of how developers or CI (Continuous Integration) processes can leverage CommandBox to consume packages using semantic versions.  All public packages can be consumed freely from any CommandBox CLI installation.  However, private packages require an API key to be used in the communication and ForgeBox will validate and secure the delivery of those packages by either the owner or collaborators on that package (PRO Accounts).  All packages are stored in geo-distributed data centers and replicated for redundancy.  They are also distributed by Amazon’s Cloudfront CDN for faster downloads and installations across the world.

 

 

 

 

CommandBox can install packages from many endpoints like https, git, etc.  Why use FORGEBOX then?  Here are the main advantages of leveraging consumption from FORGEBOX:

 

• Granular, secure access control for installation
• Geo-distributed redundant storage
• Geo-distributed CDN (cloud delivery network) of your binaries
• Usage of Semantic versioning to download the packages you want or a range of versions you want.  It is impossible for other endpoints to determine semantic version ranges. Only FORGEBOX has the appropriate algorithms for determining the right version requested.
• Localized cache artifacts for semantic version packages at the CommandBox level.  If using any other endpoints, CommandBox has to reclone entire git repositories just to find out if changes have occurred.
• Install Block controls (Coming soon), you can mark certain package versions to be unsafe or not compliant with you or your organization.  CommandBox will then reject the installation of packages that do not meet the block controls defined in FORGEBOX.

 

These are the most compelling features of why you would want to leverage FORGEBOX for the installation of your ColdFusion (CFML) modular packages.  PRO accounts get the benefit of making packages private and adding collaborators to those private packages.  FREE Community accounts can still have collaborators but you only get public packages.

 

FORGEBOX® Publishers

 

FORGEBOX and CommandBox are NOT a replacement for source control.  They augment source control by providing you with the ability to publish, analyze your software and distribute it globally through our geo-replicated network and distribution infrastructure.  You don’t have to give other people access to your source repositories or even know where your source code exists.  You have complete control of who can install your software and who can publish updates to your software.  Our PRO accounts focus on collaboration with other developers and our Organization plans will focus on organizations with more than 1 developer and even different teams within your organization with granular security controls.

 

 

As you can see from our publisher diagram above, CommandBox can also act as the orchestrator to assemble and publish your binaries into FORGEBOX.  This can be either done by a developer or a CI (Continuous Integration) process.  Both will clone the source repositories (if any), assemble the final binary as you see fit and then send it to FORGEBOX using a special publish API key.  FORGEBOX will then determine if you are the package owner or a collaborator on the package and either block the publishing or allow it.  We will then store your binary in our geo-distributed binary storage and deliver it across the cloud delivery network ready for consumption.  Stop worrying about how to secure the access to building your software, let us do the heavy lifting.

 

* PRO accounts get private packages and private collaborators only

 

Our Commitment

 

FORGEBOX has become an essential tool in the continuous development processes for any ColdFusion (CFML) application.  Our commitment to open source is strong and the FREE community version of FORGEBOX powers 1.4 million requests a month and almost 1100 registered publish users.  We have invested not only in our infrastructure but also invested heavily in the development of the next generation of FORGEBOX services that are going to be coming real soon.

 

$4.99 PRO Accounts

 

With that said, we are lowering the price of our PRO version of FORGEBOX down to $4.99/month.  We have received feedback from our community and we also want to push the ColdFusion community to the next level of modernization by making it affordable for anyone to develop, publish and collaborate with anyone in the world.

 

What’s Next

 

We are hard at work on our next major version of FORGEBOX.  Here are the major features coming soon in 2021:

 

• Organizations
  • Ability to create and manage unlimited organizations from your account
  • Each organization can designate packages as public or private
  • Each organization can have teams and those teams can have different packages assigned to them with different access controls
  • Organization activity feeds
• eCommerce
  • Any user or organization will be able to sell their packages via FORGEBOX
  • We will collect payments or recurring payments and create on-demand installation license keys for people to leverage for installing those binaries
• Statistics
  • We all love stats! We will be introducing tons of stats for your packages, security audits and more
• Security Audits
  • Ability to scan your software binaries for security risks
• Install Blocks
  • Ability to create installation policies at the organization level of what packages or even what versions can be installed or not installed
• Code Quality Audits
  • Automated code checker scanning rules of your binaries. With reports about the quality of the software you are producing
• Source Code Integration
  • Ability to see the source code activity and process right from your package page.
  • Integrations with Github, Bitbucket, Gitlab, etc.
• Webhooks
  • Ability to register webhooks for many FORGEBOX events
• Single Sign On
  • We will provide single sign on capabilities for Github and Google (more coming soon)

 

We are very passionate about FORGEBOX and CommandBox as we know these are essential tools to keep our community vibrant and exciting.  We highly encourage you to sign up, try it out, install and share your knowledge.  The only way to grow higher, is to lift each other up in this community.

 

Build - Share - Grow