Well, Chris came to the rescue and created a simple program to do exactly that. So here’s Chris to explain the program and how it works:
Download links are at the bottom of the page.

Hi,

My name is Chris Brown and I am a big fan of FogBugz so when FogCreek announced Kiln (a mercurial client) I immediately jumped on the bandwagon moved to Kiln and have never looked back. The Kiln Mercurial solution solved all the issues I had with merging and speed in Subversion and I was a very happy man indeed.

Then one day whilst chatting to my good friend Gary @ Simian Enterprises (who has kindly let me blog via his site on this occasion) I mentioned Kiln to him and proceeded to wax lyrical about how great it was until his ears were bleeding and to my surprise I had convinced him to give Kiln a try.

Now Gary was at first very happy and was as thrilled as me at the beautiful Kiln web experience and TortoiseHg integration, however there was one nagging feature he used a lot in Subversion which does not exist within the Mercurial system, and after doing a bit of googling it seems a few other people hit the same snag.

It is not possible with TortoiseHg to export a copy of all files changed since a specified revision. Now to most this would not cause much of an issue, I myself have never had this need, and do not think I will, but for those working on big complex websites like Gary does this is a big issue.

When uploading the new version of a site (usually by FTP) this can take some time, and I am sure most people will agree that uploading files with no changes is nothing but a waste of time. Being able to export just the files changed since the last update and only updating these makes a lot more sense and will result in far fewer files being transferred and as mentioned TortoiseSVN has this capability as standard.

With any luck one day the TortoiseHg system can also have this command, until then I have written a small application in Visual Studio 2010 which does what Gary needed and hopefully it will be of use to other Kiln/Mercurial users too.

Please note: this is one of those programs I knocked up very quickly, it does not have much error handling and the code is not that tidy, however it does work and I have provided both an installer for the app and the original Source Code, please feel free to amend as needed or build on this to meet your needs.

Below are details of each input and what it is used for and what the buttons do, this currently checks for changes between a revision and tip and assumes the current working folder is updated to Tip.

Root Directory of mercurial repository: should point to the path of the root of your repo (where .hg lives)
From Revision #: the revision number to check from
Export target folder: the folder to copy changed files to (must be blank)
List Changed Files: lists the files in the list box that will be copied based on current settings.
Export Changed Files: same as above but also copied to the target folder/
Close: does what it says on the tin.

If you like this little utiity and would like to make any comments you can find me on Twitter (@CB46)
Thanks
Chris Brown

Download: Windows Installer | Source

Frankly, I think it’s astounding that any SEO company could make such an assertion, anyone in the industry would immediately understand just how ridiculous this statement is – but unfortunaty our clients are not experts and can only make their decisions based on the advice they receive from the people who claim to be. My clients in this case have made an informed choice, based on patently false information…

So I’d like to state definitively: ColdFusion has nothing whatsoever to do with SEO… Neither does php, asp, ruby, python, perl, or in fact any back end language at all…

Search engines read the ‘mark-up’ of a website, that is to say the HTML that anyone can see by clicking ‘view source’ in the browser… A back end language such as ColdFusion, php or asp, will generate HTML mark-up according to the templates that have been coded by a developer. It is entirely possible for any of these back end languages to generate identical mark-up.
My clients in this case have paid to have their website recoded, but the HTML produced will be exactly the same as their existing website and so their search engine results will be completely unaffected… In fact, since the file extensions will change on every page, many incoming links will no longer work, so unless their new developer puts 301 redirects in place, they will most likely drop in the rankings.

As a developer working primarily with ColdFusion, it’s easy to feel angry that my clients have been mislead into believing that the work I have done for them is somehow inferior because of the language used, and indeed if I knew the name of the SEO company involved I would be in contact with them directly to argue the issue as well as naming them here… But what’s worrying is that it’s really the clients that are suffering. Through ignorance of how the Internet works, they have been led down a route that is both costly and futile, by a company that either has no knowledge of their own industry, or even more worrying, is ruthless enough to take advantage of the ignorance of their clients.

I only want what’s best for the people I work for. I want their sites to work well, to become popular, to generate revenue – and I try to give the best advice I can to help clients understand what can be
gained from their web presence. I’m sure we all do… But in a technical industry such as ours, one that combines so many different disciplines, one that every virtually every business needs to interact
with and yet very few understand, how can we combat misinformation like this?

The average client doesn’t need or want to understand how the Internet works. Mention CSS, JavaScript, back end software, web standards, etc. to the average client and they will at best, stare at
you blankly… At worst pretend they know what you’re talking about when in fact they haven’t a clue. In my experience, the best clients to work with are those that have enough knowledge of the web to understand that user experience is key, that copy is important, and that their website is an ongoing project. They don’t need to know the intricacies of code, servers and the like, but they need to trust
us to make certain decisions on their behalf.

Perhaps it’s time we tried to educate our clients. I don’t know how much information is out there to explain the basics. Maybe we should have a simple guide explaining how websites are put together that we can give to clients at the beginning of new projects… Either that or perhaps SEO companies should be licensed and regulated!!!

As I write, I’m not entirely sure what the point of this post is, but I feel it’s an issue not generally discussed and I’d be interested to know what others think. Perhaps the larger agencies don’t run into
this problem due to their reputation as experts or their tendency to work with bigger clients; but at my level, developing for small companies with little or no online strategy, half the battle is guiding them in the right direction.

So how do we compete with liars???

The Problem:

You have a fresh install of Windows 2008 server running Plesk Control Panel.
You innocently download and install a copy of ColdFusion 8. The installation goes fine and you can access the ColdFusion administrator with no problems…
However, when you try to access a .cfm page on any other site, you’re greeted with a login prompt asking for authentication details. You’ll also find that your Plesk URL does the same thing.
In fact, any page on any site other than the default (which is where your ColdFusion Administrator is installed) is now asking for authentication, and of course returning a 401 error when you are unable to supply the correct login details.

The Solution:

My best guess about what’s happening here is that the ColdFusion installation is messing with the IIS handler mappings that have been set up by Plesk. If you don’t have Plesk installed, you probably won’t run into this issue.

After what seemed like forever messing around and failing to resolve the problem I found a utility installed with Plesk called ‘Plesk Reconfigurator’.

The reconfigurator offers several options, but the one we’re after is ‘Check Componant and Folder Permissions.

Run this little godsend and select 'Check Component and Folder Permissions'

You’re then presented with a wealth of options, dependant on the software installed on your server. Click the ColdFusion option and away we go!

Lo and behold, there's an entry for ColdFusion in here...

Running this seems to reconnect the various handler settings and Coldfusion pages now work on other sites, as well as plesk. Hurrah!

And if someone had only written this post sooner, I’d have saved myself a lot of time.

As a conscientious web developer, I aim to create clean & accessible code, using currently accepted best practices. Unfortunately no-one can seem to agree on what those best practices might be and in any case they keep changing, so it’s difficult to keep up.

In the 90’s
We all made websites using tables. They allowed for absolute positioning of elements and enabled us to create beautiful websites that looked exactly like the Photoshop mock ups we’d lovingly crafted. The world rejoiced and everything was fine for a while, until someone told us this was completely wrong.

Then came CSS…
Having been informed that actually, we should be separating style from content for a myriad of very good reasons, we all set about forgetting everything we knew about creating websites and started again from scratch.

But it didn’t stop there
Gradually, we came to understand that there are various ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ ways to build sites even if we’re using CSS to style our content. Phrases such as ‘Semantic Markup’ and ‘Progressive Enhancement’ began to emerge and simultaneously excite and terrify.

Accessibility
Of course, there’s a genuine reason for all this mucking about behind the scenes – making our content accessible to the widest possible audience, on any device, under any condition. To that end, we were told that we should be using relative units for our text sizes, (and if the design calls for it, our layout as well) allowing users to zoom in and out at will. Helpful for those with high resolutions, with visual impairments, with small screens. Whatever.

A return to the Old Skool
Lately however, browser manufacturers have taken it upon themselves to create page zooming functionality that zooms the entire page, regardless of whether relative units have been used.

No sooner have we all got our heads around calculating Ems, and everyone’s talking about going back to pixels… because it’s easier.
Apparently we were only using Ems in the first place, to take advantage of the text zooming functionality of browsers.

I disagree, for a number of reasons
Ems are relative to the default font size of the browser. This is usually 16 pixels, but many people with visual impairments will have this default set higher. Possibly, they’ll have set the font size at the operating system level. Some people using high resolutions on small screens will have changed this setting also. I attended Jon Tan’s talk on typography a few months back and a member of the audience recounted his experience of using a laptop with the font size increased at the OS level. He was unable to click a button on a high profile website, because at his text size, the button was hidden underneath another element. Clearly if we disregard the possibility of text being resized, if we assume we have total control over the size of text in our layouts, we’ll come unstuck pretty quickly.

In any case, not everyone is a fan of the new style page zooming. Personally I find that many layouts break fairly quickly using page-zoom, and even if they don’t, it’s very quick to display the dreaded horizontal scroll bar. In Firefox, I’ve set my zooming to ‘text only’. I can’t be the only one, or the option wouldn’t be there.

Above all though, I won’t be changing back to pixel font sizes because Ems are better suited to the job. Pixel sizing may be easier, but a correctly executed complex Em layout gives me a zen-like feeling of satisfaction. I just like being a web-ninja.

It’s not hard to see which people are at the forefront, making a difference and shaping the industry. Flick through any web magazine and the same names pop up again and again. These same people are to be found speaking at conferences, advising on panels, writing thought provoking articles on their own blogs and, in a great many cases, writing books to share their expertise with the world.

My question is this: Where do they find the time?!

The industry is so fast moving that it’s all most of us can do to keep up to date. Reading through blogs and magazines, digesting the daily onslaught of new ideas and techniques, taking the time to understand new technologies as they emerge, not to mention the ever moving goalposts of ‘Best Practice’… it’s a full time job in itself! Surely we’re supposed to be spending this time working on our projects for paying clients?

Perhaps these people, these industry leaders, perhaps they are so smart that they can digest information in a fraction of the time taken by us ‘normal’ human beings. Perhaps they’re really robots… it wouldn’t surprise me. I saw Jeremy Keith’s talk at dConstruct last year and I swear at least half of it was in binary.

Maybe these people don’t need paying clients anymore… perhaps after you’ve had a certain amount of articles published on ‘A List Apart‘, the internet automatically siphons off fractions of pennies from millions of e-commerce transactions into your bank account each month, allowing you to concentrate your time on R&D…. It probably kidnaps your kids too, just to make sure you comply. We’re only months away from Skynet… Mark my words.

What’s more likely, I’d imagine, is that most of these people work alongside other, incredibly intelligent and talented individuals, each with their own specialities and ideas… and they just bounce ideas off each other. As freelancers, we’re not often afforded this opportunity, which is why networking is so important. Conferences and social networking events are a great way to meet some very clever people; and twitter makes it easy to stay in touch…
But that’s not enough for me, I need a constant influx of information; a subconscious affinity with all things technical. I’m going to get a job as a cleaner in the offices of some big web agencies so that I can install bugs in their water coolers and pipe the tapes into my bedroom while I sleep.

Not that I ever sleep… I’m too busy working.

In recent years, the web industry has begun to wander down a similar path. With the scope of the average web project being so much greater than a decade ago, the most successful web agencies are those housing multiple specialists.
These days a web project needs information architecture, copy writing, user experience & interface design, database design and development, back end coding, front end coding, user testing, a dash of marketing and some project management to tie it all together.

So where does this leave the ‘Jack of all trades’? With the recent economic ‘apocalypse’, a lot of people and especially freelancers, are wondering where their next paycheck may be coming from… How do we weather the storm?

In a recent interview, Andy Budd suggested that in today’s climate we all need to specialise or die. He makes a compelling argument, but I don’t entirely agree. I think it depends what you’re looking to achieve.
Sure, specialising in one aspect of the industry is essential if you want to get picked up by a large agency, or if you want to talk on the conference circuit, publish a book or work for one of the big players… But I think there’s still room in this industry for the multi-skilled ‘website creators’. Our target market is the small business. Not everyone can afford to hire a big agency and in my experience they wouldn’t see the value of the investment even if they could.

There are quite literally millions of businesses out there that have no idea how much a good web presence would benefit them. This is where we step in, the small-time heroes of the internet. We come armed with ideas and with passion, with experience and vision. We know that our website project can revolutionise their business. It will generate enquiries, or a new revenue stream. It will save them time and money. It will exceed their expectations and all will be right in the world.

It probably seems over the top, but this is the level of enthusiasm I have at the start of every new project. I think that at this, the smaller end of the scale, we have an opportunity to create things of real value to our clients.

I may never do work for the BBC or Google. I may not invent the next Facebook or be revered amongst my peers as the best in my field… But I’ll change the life of Jason, the locksmith who lives around the corner.

That’s rewarding… Hell, that’s exciting…
When Jason calls to tell me that I’ve saved him five man-hours a day in admin time with an invoicing system I built him for a few grand… that’s the best damned feeling in the world.
It might not make it onto an awards site and be featured in .NET magazine – but Jason spends more time with his kids and tells all his friends what a wonderful job I’ve done.

Jason, of course, had no idea this was possible – he was just looking for a website to advertise his business. He didn’t have an online strategy or a marketing budget, and he didn’t invite several high profile web agencies to tender for his business. He asked his friend who’d created their website and he gave me a call.

There are plenty of Jasons out there.
Find them, make their lives better and get paid for it… and keep smiling… life is awesome.

As you may know, when I’m not busy making websites, I make t-shirts inspired by retro video games. Recently some of our designs were shamelessly ripped off by an ex-supplier of ours, who then, (astoundingly) tried to wholesale them back to us!

I spoke to several law firms and organisations and thought I would share the advice I received.
Please note that while I am paraphrasing advice I received, you should in no way assume this information to be legally sound – I would ALWAYS advise you to speak to a copyright lawyer in these matters. This said, here follows my top copyright tips:

1. Your work is automatically copyrighted

According to UK copyright law, the act of creating original work automatically gives you copyright over that work for 75 years after your death.
Of course the burden of proof is on you, but assuming you are able to assert yourself as the author of the work (drafts, layered PSDs, etc. should suffice) the law is very much on your side.

2. Register your work with A©ID

A©ID – which stands for ‘Anti Copying in Design’ are an organisation set up for individuals and small businesses to copyright their original works. For a moderate yearly fee, you are able to register your work on their database. Essentially all this does is help you assert yourself as the copyright holder. An entry into the A©ID database would look good in court if your case ever got that far. A©ID also has deals with copyright lawyers across the country, which can offer advice and in some cases, discounted litigation.

3. Even though the law is on your side, you’ll still have to find the money to litigate

Litigation is expensive. Lawyers cost a ridiculous amount of money, and you’ll have to pay them to take anyone to court. In the likely case that you win, whoever copied your work will usually be liable for your legal fees, but you’ll still have to pay up front and recover the cost later – which is usually way too expensive.
It’s not all bad though…

4. Write a letter

Most half-friendly copyright lawyers will write a letter for you for around £75. This is a fairly standard ‘cease and desist’ letter, which notifies of copyright infringement and requests the immediate discontinuation of said infringement. Essentially, you’re telling company X to stop using your design immediately.

In most cases, this is as far as it goes. A scary looking letter from a lawyer is usually enough to stop most people copying your work. You can try to get some compensation for any items they’ve sold too, but don’t hold your breath.
If you can’t afford to pay the lawyer, there’s nothing stopping you from sending a strongly worded letter yourself – it’s just as valid, but obviously more likely to be ignored. If company X ignores your letter, the next step is expensive litigation.

5. If you can’t afford to litigate, let them know that you intend to… at a later date

This is the important one. From the moment they receive your first letter notifying them of copyright infringement, they are liable. Send them another letter telling them that you can’t afford to take them to court right now, but that as soon as you can, you will. Even if you decide to take them to court 10 years down the line, they’re still liable; and if they kept using your design for those 10 years, they’ll have to pay for the lot.
Beautiful, that one.

6. There is more than one way to infringe on copyright

The act of copying your work is one infringement, but offering it for sale is another infringement in itself. What this means is if your work has been copied by a wholesaler, as mine had, then any customers of theirs that buy from them and offer your work for sale, are also liable – even if they have no knowledge that the work was yours originally. Again, send them a letter notifying them of copyright infringement. Usually these guys will immediately discontinue the product and send you a letter back.

The idea here isn’t to get the little guy – the idea is that they will go back to their suppliers complaining that the product they bought from them was yours… it’s a house of cards.

7. Don’t lose sleep over it… Really.

You can get yourself incredibly worked up over the copyright issue, but the fact remains that you can’t always stop it from happening. It’s a harsh world. Do what you can, and get on with your life.

I know as a ColdFusion developer, I should probably be using Mango Blog or BlogCFC – Both of which are pretty awesome in their own right – but at the end of the day WordPress is simply a better tool for the job.
I’ve heard it said before, but I’ll chuck my opinion out there too: The new WordPress UI is absolutely fantastic, and I have to say it’s that more than anything else that made me choose it over the other two.

Of course, integrating WordPress with the rest of my ColdFusion site proved interesting. Several things in the site template are achieved through ColdFusion and had to be replicated in PHP. I ended up writing a CFC to pull data from a WordPress blog, which has proved enormously helpful. If I get the chance, I’ll clean that up a bit and put it up as a download – I can’t be the only one wanting to use WordPress on a ColdFusion powered site.

Props go to Anthony at Afovea.com for the lovely new design.
Also, due largely to two fantastic talks by Jon Tan and Richard Rutter at Skillswap Brighton, I have lovingly embraced typography and this site adheres strictly to a vertical rhythm. The math excites me. Really. It’s actually quite worrying.

That’s all for now. I’ve a few articles in the pipeline that I’ll be posting up here fairly soon. Until then, I’d love to hear any feedback on the new site.
Use the lovely comments box below.

Awesomage.