ProcessWire Weekly #151

Latest core updates: ProcessWire 3.0.58

In his latest post at the processwire.com blog, Ryan walks us through the updates that have been introduced by the latest development version of ProcessWire – 3.0.58 – and also some updates introduced to Admin Theme Uikit.

ProcessWire 3.0.58: bug fixes and minor additions

ProcessWire 3.0.58 contains mainly bug fixes, but also some additions submitted as PR's via GitHub. The current plan is to merge the development branch into the stable branch as soon as possible, which is also why our focus is currently on finding and fixing any remaining issues, rather than adding new features every week.

That being said: if you've had the chance to test the development branch, please let us know how it worked for you. If there are any outstanding issues with it, please submit them via GitHub, so that we can focus on getting them fixed too.

Admin Theme Uikit: preparing for the next step

Regarding Admin Theme Uikit, there's nothing new to show off this week. The planned feature set is already in place, and at this time we're focusing on improving the quality. If you're already using Admin Theme Uikit, we'd strongly recommend that you update it to the latest version for an improved experience.

If all goes well, Admin Theme Uikit should be ready for the designers in our community in the next few weeks. We're really looking forward to seeing where it goes from there – the current design was always intended just as a starting point, after all.

For more details about the updates this week and some additional notes regarding the timeline in which we should get a new master version of ProcessWire and, hopefully, a first release version of Admin Theme Uikit, check out Ryan's latest blog post. Thanks!

New module: Hanna Code Dialog

Most of you are probably already familiar with a module called Hanna Code – by far one of the most versatile modules available for ProcessWire. The module we're introducing here, Hanna Code Dialog, is a brand new helper module for Hanna Code that makes embedding Hanna Code tags as easy as pie.

To give you some background, Hanna Code tags are shorttags you can embed a specific piece of markup or even PHP generated output within any textarea, including textareas with an RTE such as CKEditor enabled. Each tag has a unique name and may have one or more params, like this: [[github_widget repository="owner/repository"]].

While embedding Hanna Code tags into a textarea is an easy task in itself, particularly those users who don't have access to add or edit tags, and thus can't view a full list of existing tags or their params either, can get a bit overwhelmed by them. That's exactly where Hanna Code Dialog steps in:

• It adds an easy to use dropdown menu to CKEDitor for selecting a Hanna Code tag you want to embed. You can specify tags that won't appear in this menu via module settings.
• It makes embedded Hanna Code tags CKEditor widgets, which in turn makes it possible to move them by dragging, or double-click them in order to easily modify their params in a modal editing window.

All in all this is a really useful companion module for Hanna Code that continues from where an earlier module that did some of the same things, Hanna Code Helper, left off. If you're already using Hanna Code, you should definitely check out Hanna Code Dialog right away – and if not, you really should check them both out.

Big thanks to Robin Sallis for building and releasing this great module. I personally look forward to giving it a proper test drive – the set of features it provides will make using Hanna Codes way more intuitive than it has ever been!

New module: Page Sort and Move

Page Sort and Move is an utility module for ProcessWire, built by Christoph Thelen. The gist of this module is that it attempts to make moving and sorting pages effortless by extending the $page API variable with some additional methods:

• $page->sort($newIndex) sets a new sort index for the page. Can be used to move the page to a specific place among its siblings.
• $page->move($newIndex, $parentID = null) is the same as the sort method above, but with additional support for changing the parent of the page.
• $page->moveFirst($parentID = null) moves the page before any of its siblings, or alternatively before any of the children of the given parent page.
• $page->moveLast($parentID = null) moves the page after any of its siblings, or alternatively after any of the children of the given parent page.

Since the latest development versions of ProcessWire actually introduces very similar improvements to moving and sorting pages via the API, we're not entirely sure where this module will land. At the very least it can still provide some ease of use for those using an earlier release and not wanting to update their sites right away.

Either way, big thanks to Christoph for sharing this module with us – keep up the great work! For anyone who wants to give this module a go, feel free to grab it from GitHub.

Site of the week: VID Vitenskapelige Høgskole

Our latest site of the week belongs to VID Vitenskapelige Høgskole, a Norwegian university that has campuses in Bergen, Oslo, Sandnes, and Stavanger. Born January 1st, 2016 when four existing institutions merged, with its 3500 students and 340 employees VID is today one of the largest private universities in Norway.

The site of VID Vitenskapelige Høgskole features a clean and responsive design, and a collection of specialized templates for different content types – basic content pages, various types of directories, news and events, etc. Some elements may seem familiar to those who've been following the development of Admin Theme Uikit, and there's a good reason for that: the VID website is also based on the Uikit front-end framework.

In addition to Uikit, some of the other technical highlights of this site include the use of JSON-LD metadata, HTTPS protection for the whole site, multi-language implementation, and an embedded site search powered by Google. While some parts could be optimized further, the site also feels quite fast, so we've got no complaints on that area either.

Thanks to Asbjørn Ness for creating another great site and sharing it with us, and our congratulations to the client – the VID website looks really great, and based on what we've seen so far, there's no doubt that it serves its target audience well!

Stay tuned for our next issue

That's it for the 151st issue of ProcessWire Weekly. We'll be back with more news, updates, and content Saturday, 8th of April. 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!