ProcessWire Weekly #17

Getting ready for ProcessWire 2.5

This time our core updates section is rather short, and that's for a good reason: we're getting ready to launch ProcessWire 2.5 in the very near future and that means focusing heavily on the quality assurance side of things. The dev branch updates this week have been bug fixes and optimisations with some relatively minor exceptions:

• Multi-language site profile was added to the core package
• LanguageTabs support was added to file and image fields
• Additions to images:
  • options available for size() method of PageImage now include suffix and forceNew; suffix adds a custom suffix to created image and forceNew re-creates the image, removing an earlier version if it already exists
  • PageImage getVariations() method now also accepts an array of options; these are best described in the comments to said method, but in a nutshell they allow getting variations as arrays and filtering based on specific criteria

Ryan has been busy working on aforementioned bugfixes and optimisations, but any additional feedback – issues, bugs, general weirdness – you folks can provide would be most helpful in making 2.5 a stable and high quality release.

If possible, please take a while to install current dev branch and see how it works for you!

A case study you don't want to miss: National Geographic Traveller India

Case Study: The triumph of National Geographic Traveller India in ProcessWire elaborately explains why the team behind NGTI site made a sudden switch from Drupal to ProcessWire during the project and why they believe it was the best decision they made.

The case story is quite fascinating to read and explains in depth many of the things that make ProcessWire such a tremendously useful platform for all kinds of custom solutions. A definite must-read!

Remarkably, our Drupal team picked up PW twithout any issues. It took them a week to grasp it and get going. That was a record of sorts as we’d folks who struggled with Drupal even after 3 months on a project, still coming to grips with techniques and modules.
— ChiefPundit

PageTableExtended is an ingenious extension of native PageTable field

ProcessWire developers are already using the newest addition to native ProcessWire fields, PageTable, to build flexible content structures. Marc Hinse has taken this concept one step further with his new module, aptly titled PageTableExtended.

The basic idea behind PageTableExtended is that instead of displaying a set of field values from pages in specific PageTable field, why not render them as partial templates and display rendered output directly at the admin?

Here's a video that cleary demonstrates the abilities of the module:

Process Abbreviate adds simple tools for abbreviation management

Process Abbreviate by Sven Schüring combines CKEditor plugin "abbr" and two ProcessWire modules in order to make abbreviation management trivial task. It's definitely something you might want to consider using especially if you're a heavy user of abbreviations.

The CKEditor plugin adds an abbreviations button to CKEditor toolbar, making it easy to mark abbreviations in your content. If the word you're marking up as an abbrevation matches one in your collection, that is suggested automatically. Modules handle two tasks:

1. whenever a page is saved, all found abbreviations are added to a collection of known abbreviations automatically (unless already present there)
2. new admin page "Abbreviations" gives you simple tools for viewing and managing your own, site-wide abbreviations collection

Great work, Sven – and congratulations for your first (published) ProcessWire module!

Recent ProcessWire online resources

• Here's a new-ish three-part (so far) ProcessWire guide that covers topics from installation to building your first templates: http://adamxp12.com/guides/processwire-part-1-installing
• Evan MCDaniel on the question of "How does ProcessWire compare to WordPress": http://www.quora.com/WordPress/How-does-Processwire-compare-to-Wordpress/answer/Evan-McDaniel
• We have mentioned before, but it bears repeating; ProcessWire.tv, built by Nico Knoll, is a curated collection of ProcessWire videos worth checking out: http://processwire.tv/

For real-time updates and news, follow @processwire at Twitter!

Featured site of the week: National Geographic Traveller India

There's a first time for everything, and in this case that's a site getting covered in not just one but two sections in our weekly updates. This is the same site we mentioned earlier as a case study you don't want to miss, and we're also including it as our featured site of the week: meet the National Geographic Traveller India!

Some aspects of the site are clearly a work in progress (as the "beta" badge in the logo friendly suggests) but for the most parts one can already get a very good idea what the site is all about – a combination of great design, skillfully crafted interface and unbelievably amounts of great, unique content.

Our congratulations to Pigtail Pundits (for building) and HNH!Digital (for designing) a truly magnificent site!

Friendly reminder about the ongoing cmscritic.com CMS Awards

First of all, nominations for the Critic's Choice CMS Awards are now open. Even if you already nominated ProcessWire as a candidate for the cmscritic.com People's Choice awards, don't forget to nominate it here too – your support is very much appreciated.

Another thing to note is the People's Choice awards voting, which is open until October 17th. If you havent already voted, please do so now.. but of course only if you really consider ProcessWire the "Best Free PHP CMS", which is the category we're listed in.

.. and once more, thank you for your support. ProcessWire wouldn't be the same if it wasn't for the awesome community we've got!

Stay tuned for our next issue

We're done for this week but we'll be back in a week – 13th of September – with a newsletter version delivered a few days later to ProcessWire newsletter subscribers. Until then, happy hacking with ProcessWire!