ProcessWire Weekly #120

Latest core updates: ProcessWire 3.0.32 and 2.8.32

In his latest post at the processwire.com blog, Ryan walks us through the latest core updates (3.0.32 and 2.8.32) and also some of the remaining questions regarding the update path from 2.7 to 3.0 (or 2.8).

Core updates introduced by 3.0.32 and 2.8.32

Here's a brief list of the core updates introduced by ProcessWire 3.0.32 and 2.8.32:

• CKEditor and HTMLPurifier have been updated to latest versions. This shouldn't really change anything, except for improving the stability of said modules.
• All text type fields (text, textarea) now support minimum and maximum length requirements. This also applies to said fields when used in FormBuilder forms.
• All text type fields now also support optional character or word counter. These counters will highlight if – and when – text length requirements aren't met.

Please note that while aforementioned core updates work as expected for all regular text fields, textarea fields, and CKEditor fields, at least for the time being they do not work for CKeditor fields in inline mode.

ProcessWire 3.x and the upgrade path for existing sites

Most ProcessWire version upgrades so far have meant little more than just replacing your /wire/ directory, index.php file, and (in some cases) the .htaccess file with new ones, updating an existing site from 2.x to 3.x could mean a little more than just that.

While the FileCompiler takes care of most technical differencies, some modules may require tweaks or updates, and particularly more complex sites will sometimes need tweaks to templates too. This is why Ryan has proposed following plan:

• In the near future, the latest 3.x version of ProcessWire will be moved from it's current GitHub repository ryancramerdesign/processwire to a new one, most likely processwire/processwire. New installations should use this repository.
• The old repository will host the 2.8 version of ProcessWire. Existing sites can be easily upgraded to this version, and since 2.8 doesn't include namespaces, this upgrade is very similar to all our earlier upgrades.

There's actually a little more than that to Ryan's plan, but the important point is that if you're hosting sites using the stable versions of ProcessWire and want to upgrade them, you should consider going with 2.8 in order to avoid any incompatibilities. On the other hand we strongly suggest that all new sites use the 3.x branch instead.

You can read more about Ryan's thoughts and plans from his latest blog post. Feel free to drop in a comment if you've got any worries – or if you just want to say that you fully agree with the plan. Thanks for your feedback!

ProcessWire recipe of the week

Many of you are probably already familiar with a site called ProcessWire Recipes. This site includes a list of recipes for ProcessWire, typically written in the form of "problem, solution": each recipe provides a solution to a specific and often common problem.

This week we decided to highlight a recipe of the week from the archives of ProcessWire Recipes. This particular recipe is a relatively short one, but it's not length or complexity that makes a good recipe, but rather it's usefulness. The name of the recipe in question is "maintenance mode" and it was authored by Christian Raunitschka.

Problem

You are currently reworking the page/field/template/module structure of your site and have a local db dump of the live site on your system but you don't want the user to make changes in the meantime. A restore from local back to live would otherwise overwrite the user's changes.

Solution

Add this on top of your /site/templates/admin.php

// check if the user is logged in and if they are not a super user
if ($user->isLoggedIn() && $config->maintenance === true && !$user->isSuperuser()) {
    // logout the user
    $session->logout();
    // spit out an error message via session, so it still appears after the redirect
    $session->error('Database currently in maintenance - logged out');
    // redirect to the login page
    $session->redirect($config->urls->admin);
}

In your /site/config.php you add a config value maintenance and change it back to false if you're done maintaining.

$config->maintenance = true;

That's it – now you've got an easy way to put your site into a maintenance mode and prevent any confusion or harm done by editors changing things while you're making your own changes to site structure, templates, or anything else that could potentially clash with actions of those editors.

If you've got a recipe of your own that you'd like to share with others, feel free to submit it at ProcessWire Recipes. Big thanks to Christian for the recipe we've featured here!

Weekly forum highlights, tutorials, and other online resources

Here we've got a new collection of support forum highlights and other useful and/or interesting resources. As always please let us know if there's anything important we've missed so that we can include it in one of our future issues.

• First of all, there's a new Tuts+ tutorial for ProcessWire: Extending the ProcessWire Admin Using Custom Modules by Ben Byford. This tutorial is a nice introduction to building Process module for ProcessWire – definitely recommended!
• Moving on to module updates, if you're one of those users eagerly awaiting 3.x support for the CroppableImage modules, Horst has posted a little teaser and status update. Looks like we might have a working module at our hands soon.
• While we're on the topic of module updates, Tracy Debugger has received a bunch of new tools – we're particularly thrilled about the module disabler panel – and Jumplinks has received a couple of bugfix updates. There's also a new version of AdminOnSteroids available, introducing a new download shortcut for file fields.
• Here's a new module we hope to feature in more detail later: MarkupUikitLoader makes it easy to load Uikit components conditionally, based on various factors of the page being currently viewed. Looks pretty interesting to say the least.
• Finally, a brief dip into the sysadmin world: we've got a pretty informative thread going on at the support forum about monitoring sites and/or servers. If you are serious about your site's uptime, this is worth checking out for some quick tips.

If you're interested in ProcessWire news, discussions, and updates, there's always something going on at the support forum. Since we're only able to include a tiny selection of all that in our weekly updates, head down to the forum for more.

Site of the week: EIZO ColorEdge

Our latest site of the week, EIZO ColorEdge, belongs to a company producing premium computer displays and monitors. The site in question is a showcase for their ColorEdge line of monitors and the software products they offer mainly for design professionals.

The premium quality of EIZO producst and their strong focus on high quality colour is clearly visible on the design of the site. The whole site is full of colour, ranging all the way from colourful gradients to bold and quite distinctive background videos. The site also includes generous amounts of transitions and full-screen content blocks, both of which fit the overall style of the site perfectly.

Behind the scenes the site makes use of various modules, both commercial (ProCache and ProFields) and non-commercial (Hanna Code, MarkupSEO, ColorPicker, MapMarker, and MobileDetect). The modules used are something we learned from the showcase forum thread, so don't forget to check that out for more details.

Big thanks to Tom for sharing this project with us. We're always delighted to hear of new and interesting projects using ProcessWire, and this is one of the most interesting ones we seen lately!

Stay tuned for our next issue

That's it for the 120th issue of ProcessWire Weekly. We'll be back with more news, updates, and content Saturday, 3rd of September. As always, ProcessWire newsletter subscribers will get our updates a few days later.

Thanks for staying with us, once again. Hope you've had a great and productive week, and don't forget to check out the ProcessWire forums for more interesting topics. Until next week, happy hacking with ProcessWire!