ProcessWire Weekly #173

Latest core updates: ProcessWire 3.0.74 and the FieldsetPage module

In the latest post at the processwire.com blog Ryan introduces ProcessWire 3.0.74 (dev) and, continuing where we left off last week, a brand new core fieldtype called FieldsetPage.

FieldsetPage bears similarities with regular Fieldsets and Repeaters. The UI is identical to Fieldsets, making it pretty much a no-brainer for content editors, while behind the scenes FieldsetPage borrows a lot from Repeaters, with one notable difference: there's never more than one instance of each FieldsetPage field connected to any given page.

As for reasons to use FieldsetPage instead of Fieldset or Repeaters, there are a few:

• Unlike Fieldset, the fields that a FieldsetPage contains are defined in one place, meaning that if you add or remove fields, all pages that include said FieldsetPage field will be updated accordingly.
• Behind the scenes FieldsetPage uses a separate Page to store its data. This is also why you can have same fields – such as the "title" field – on both the parent page and the FieldsetPage field.
• Using FieldsetPage via the API is really simple, thanks to the fact that it creates a kind of a namespace of its own: echo $page->fieldset->title, $page->fieldset->title = "new value", and so on.
• While FieldsetPage offers similar benefits as the Repeater field, it is easier to set up and use, and thanks to its inherent 1:1 relation with the parent page it can be a better choice in terms of performance.

This new fieldtype is already included in the latest version of our development branch, and dev users can get it up and running just by installing the FieldsetPage module. For more details about the FieldsetPage fieldtype, remember to check out Ryan's weekly post at the processwire.com blog. Thanks!

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.

• Votings for the CMS Critic's Critics Awards 2017 are now open, and ProcessWire is featured in the Best CMS for SMB category alongside CraftCMS and MODX. We're definitely in good company here, but y'all know which one should be the winner, right? Vote now and help us stand out from the crowd!
• If you're still looking for that perfect approach to starting a ProcessWire project, SuperTINY has a new option for you: a basic ProcessWire boilerplate to get you started with Git, SCSS and JS minification. Getting this boilerplate up and running is a trivial task, but requires a couple of command-line tools – namely Git, npm, and gulp.
• If you'd like to generate srcset markup for responsive images with ease via the API, you should check out the latest version of the MarkupSrcSet module. Version 0.1 of this thir party module is a major rewrite, and using it is now even easier than before.
• Finally, some self-advertisement. A couple of weeks ago we ran a poll where we asked about the single new feature that would bring most value to ProcessWire. We got a number of great answers, and if you'd like to see how it turned out, the results of said poll are now available via the ProcessWire Weekly Poll Archive.

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: ChaletOwners

Our latest site of the week, ChaletOwners, is a platform that allows one to find and book a chalet for a nice vacation in the Alps. With more than a thousand chalet choices across six different locations there are plenty of options to choose from, and via the ChaletOwners site finding the most suitable option is a breeze.

Design wise ChaletOwners is a decent looking site, and the user experience seems well thought out. Content is easy to locate, the site is available in three languages, the search features – the quick search at the top of the home page and the extended search deeper in the site – both feel intuitive to use, and there's plenty of useful information – high quality photographs, floor plans, accommodation options, and so on – about the chalets themselves. The overall experience is definitely positive and in line with the purpose and target audience of the site.

The front-end of this site makes use of the Bootstrap front-end framework and various JavaScript tools, including autocomplete library typeahead.js, cross device select plugin jquery.sumoselect, datepicker plugin foundation-datepicker.js, and gallery plugin PhotoSwipe. All connections to the site go through HTTPS, which is the best practice nowadays anyway, and as a curious detail it appears that the bulk of static resources (JavaScript, CSS, and images) get loaded from a separate caching server.

Congratulations to the folks behind ChaletOwners.com, Lion de Montagne Sàrl, for creating such a wonderful website, and thanks for sharing it with us!

Stay tuned for our next issue

That's it for the 173rd issue of ProcessWire Weekly. We'll be back with more news, updates, and content Saturday, 9th 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!