The 172nd issue of ProcessWire Weekly brings in all the latest news from the ProcessWire community. Modules, core updates, sites, and more. Read on!
Welcome to the 172nd issue of ProcessWire Weekly! This week we're taking a closer look at the latest core updates and module development news from Ryan, we've got a new third party module to introduce, and the weekly highlights section is here once again. As always, we're also going to showcase a new site of the week, this time belonging to a company that refers to itself as a "cycling society".
As you can see, we don't have a new poll this week. The poll will be back by next week, once we've made some additional tweaks to the newly introduced "suggest your own answer" feature. Though the feature itself was well received, the implementation was somewhat rough on the edges and still needs a bit more work.
In the meantime last week's poll is going to stay open for a while longer, so if you haven't yet had a chance to vote, feel free to do it now. Please note, though, that the poll may already be closed if you're getting this update via the newsletter.
Thanks to all of our readers for being here with us again, and as always, any feedback is most welcome – please don't hesitate to drop us a line if there's anything in your mind you'd like to share with us.
ProcessWire 3.0.73 and a preview of two new work-in-progress Fieldset modules
As always, the latest post at the processwire.com blog by Ryan contains a ton of interesting information. This week's post focuses on two new Fieldset modules he's currently working on, but also describes in detail a couple of very useful UI/UX related updates for existing Fieldtype fields introduced in ProcessWire 3.0.73.
Fieldset Group and Fieldset Page
Ryan is currently working on two new modules, Fieldset Group and Fieldset Page, both of which aim to solve a rather common need: grouping fields together and then sharing these groups between multiple templates without the need to rely on Repeaters:
- Fieldset Group allows you to create a new fieldset and then hand-pick the fields it should contain. Once you add this fieldset to one or more of your templates, they will automatically include all the fields included in the fieldset itself. If you add or remove fields or make changes to them, those changes will also be automatically applied to all the templates that have this fieldset.
- Fieldset Page is similar to the Fieldset Group in terms of behaviour, but in terms of technical details it bears similarities with Repeaters. Instead of directly tying the fields in the fieldset with the template, behind the scenes a separate page is created for storage. One major benefit here is that when using this fieldtype, you can connect, say, multiple fieldsets with the "title" field to one template.
ProcessWire 3.0.73
In addition to various bugfixes and minor tweaks, the latest dev version of ProcessWire, 3.0.73, focuses on the usability of our existing Fieldset fieldtype:
- Fieldsets can now be moved as a whole. In earlier versions if you wanted to move a fieldset in relation to other fields on the template, you actually had to move not just the start and end tags of the fieldset, but also each individual field within it, one by one.
- Adding a fieldset to a template automatically adds the end tag for the fieldset. Though this isn't a huge deal by any means, it's again one of those small things that make the UI feel more intuitive. Why spend the extra time to add the _END tag separately, when we already know that it'll be needed?
- Fieldset support was added directly to the jQuery asmSelect plugin. In a nutshell this means that fieldsets behave correctly anywhere they can be used, instead of just in the context of our Template editor.
For more in-depth details about the new fieldset modules and the usability updates brought in by ProcessWire 3.0.73, including a handy GIF animation that shows the UI updates in action, please check out the weekly blog post by Ryan. Thanks!
New module: AutoPageTitles
AutoPageTitles, created by support forum user Sipho, is one of those tiny helper modules that can sometimes prove out to be really helpful and save plenty of time and frustration.
In a nutshell this module updates the title field of a page upon save with a value based on other fields of the page and a format specified via a new template level setting "title format", such as "{last_name}, {first_name}" or "{parent.title} {my_custom_field}". The module also hides the original title field to avoid unnecessary confusion.
Thanks to Sipho for sharing this module with us, and keep up the great work. This is a very nice little module indeed!
Weekly forum highlights, tutorials, and other online resources
Here's a list 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.
- Creating the basic setup for modular content blocks in ProcessWire is a brand new tutorial by Michael van Laar. This article is the second part of a series, and we'd also recommend checking out the first part, which explains why you should consider the modular content block approach in the first place.
- Another new tutorial this week, published at the Envato Tuts+ site by Ben Byford, is labeled ProcessWire Admin Theme Strategies. This brief and easy-to-follow tutorial walks the reader through the process of creating his or her own admin theme for ProcessWire.
- Though it's not exactly a new item, some of you might be unaware that the SeaVuel multilingual hotel site profile we've featured in some of our earlier issues, is now available via Envato Market. This is one of the first commercial site profiles that we've come across, though it's by no means expensive: $28 for a regular license with 6 months of support, and $9 more for an extended 12 month support period.
- Finally, a blog post by a Belgian company Typografics about ProcessWire. This one is relatively light on content and not really aimed for existing ProcessWire users or developers, but either way we're always happy to hear companies advocate the use of ProcessWire!
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: BICICLI
Our latest site of the week belongs to a Berlin based company founded by bicycle enthusiasts, BICICLI Holding GmbH. Founded in 2017, BICICLI offers a range of bicycle related services for small and large companies – from consultation to workshops and a cycling club – and they are in the process of opening their own shops and even a Cycling Café.
The ProcessWire powered website of BICICLI was built by Nils Wiere and makes use of the Foundation front-end framework. It is a responsive site with rather simplistic design, the most prominent details being certain typographic choices and of course the large, colourful, and bicycle themed photographs used for carousels, background images, and to liven up the content itself.
Behind the scenes this site makes use of the commercial ProCache module, and all connections to the site are secured using HTTPS. As we mentioned above, the front-end is largely powered by the Foundation framework, and some of the smaller details are provided by libraries and services such as jQuery, Flickity slider, and Typekit.
Big thanks to Nils Wiere for sharing another great site with us, and our best wishes for the client – it's always great to see companies that work for a larger goal, and BICICLI definitely counts as one!
Stay tuned for our next issue
That's it for the 172nd issue of ProcessWire Weekly. We'll be back with more news, updates, and content Saturday, 2nd 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!
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