ProcessWire Weekly #153

Latest core updates: ProcessWire 3.0.60, API reference updates, and more

In the latest post at the processwire.com blog, Ryan has a bunch of news to share: a new development version of ProcessWire, major updates to the API reference, and a couple of updates to the Pro modules.

ProcessWire 3.0.60

The latest development version of ProcessWire, 3.0.60, fixes minor bugs and improves the overall stability of the system. It also includes various updates to code comment level documentation and a new version of HTML Purifier. Nothing major, but again a recommended update to those of you already using the dev branch for your sites.

What's probably more interesting is that it looks like 3.0.60 will eventually become our new master version – and that could actually happen in the next few days. This means that those of you who prefer to stick with a stable release will finally get to play with all the new and fun features we've added during the past few months.

API reference updates

Our new API reference, powered behind the scenes by the API Explorer module, has received various updates. These updates include updated and added content, some usability improvements, improvements to metadata, and more.

In the near future we hope to update the cheatsheet project to also pull it's content from the same source as the API reference, meaning that it would be automatically in sync with the latest API reference.

Pro module updates

This time we've also got some updates to the commercial Pro modules maintained by Ryan. ProCache, ProFields Table, and ProDevTools API Explorer have all been updated. Users of said modules can read more about these updates from the support forum.

Fingers crossed that everything goes well and we have a new stable release by next week. You can trust me when I say that there's a lot of fun stuff coming your way. For more details about the weekly updates, don't forget to check out Ryan's blog post!

New module: SessionHandlerDBRedis

SessionHandlerDBRedis is a brand new session handler module develpoed Karl Tai. It's essentially a drop in replacement for the built-in SessionHandlerDB, and an updated and extended version of an earlier Session Handler Redis module by netcarver.

If you're wondering what this module is all about, here's the gist of it:

• There are cases where storing session information into database is preferable over storing it on the disk. That's where the built-in SessionHandlerDB module comes in: instead of disk, it stores sessions into a MySQL database table.
• The downside of the MySQL solution is performance. In large scale use it can get slow and put unnecessary strain on your MySQL server. This module solves both issues by storing session data into a separate Redis data store, thus providing – again in very large scale – noticeable performance improvements.

For most sites this probably doesn't matter that much, and it should also be noted that if you're in a shared hosting environment you may not even have access to a Redis data store, but particularly in large scale use this module can be extremely useful.

Please keep in mind that this is still an early release, and as of this writing this module is not even available from our official modules directory yet. That being said, if you'd like to give this module a try, you can already download or clone it from GitHub.

Big thanks to Karl for sharing this module with us – that's quite something for your first module, and we really hope that you keep on working on this one! Redis based session handler is definitely something we can see a lot of demand for in the near future.

New module: RestrictTreeDropdown

RestrictTreeDropdown is a tiny utility module developed by Robin Sallis. The long and short of this module is that it allows you to selectively hide the Tree dropdown menu introduced in ProcessWire 3.0.55 for users with a specific role.

As mentioned above this really is a tiny module, but it may nevertheless come in handy for some use cases, and as such is a great thing to have around. Please note, though, that this module isn't related to permissions: it simply disables an UI feature for you.

Anyway, big thanks to Robin for another contributions – keep up the great work!

Site of the week: Motorgeräte Eiberger

Our latest site of the week belongs to a German company called Motorgeräte Eiberger. They are based in the state of Bavaria, southeastern Germany, and specialize in selling and servicing garden tools, motor saws, lawn mowers, etc.

This responsive, ProcessWire powered site of Motorgeräte Eiberger was designed and developed by Maximilian Ehrhardt of SowieSo creativ.handwerk, another Bavaria based company. The design is clean and modern, the site feels fast, and the implementation works great in all typical screen sizes.

Behind the scenes this site is powered by the Uikit front-end framework, which is pretty much the only detail we have to share here. There are no familiar modules, and the front-end is otherwise relatively minimalistic. One possibly interesting detail is that the site seems to be hosted on nginx. It's nearly impossible to say for sure whether this is used "all the way" or if it's just using a proxy in front of Apache, though.

Congratulations to both the client and the company behind this site – not only does it look great, it's also enjoyable to use and we have no doubt that it serves it's target audience well. Thanks for sharing it with us!

Stay tuned for our next issue!

That's it for the 153rd issue of ProcessWire Weekly. We'll be back with more news, updates, and content Saturday, 22nd 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!