ProcessWire Weekly #177

The 177th 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 177th issue of ProcessWire Weekly. This time we're going to walk you through the latest core updates and introduce the new design of AdminThemeUikit, ask you a brief hosting related question in our weekly poll, introduce a tiny new helper module from Robin Sallis, and of course choose a new site of the week.

As a quick reminder, you still have time to participate in CMS Critic Awards 2017. The voting closes 1st of November, so you have plenty of time to show your support for ProcessWire. And for all of you who have already voted for us – thank you!

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. Enjoy our latest issue and have a great weekend!

Latest core updates: ProcessWire 3.0.77 and a new design for AdminThemeUikit

Preview of AdminThemeUikit with Reno themeRyan's latest post at the processwire.com blog covers two topics this week: the latest dev version of ProcessWire, 3.0.77, and a brand new design for AdminThemeUikit.

ProcessWire 3.0.77 is another minor update for the development branch of ProcessWire. This version includes some behind-the-scenes tweaks to the hook system and the built-in admin theme framework, but nothing particularly noticeable.

For those already using the dev branch and particularly those interested in trying out the latest iteration of AdminThemeUikit, this is a recommended update.

The new design for AdminThemeUikit, on the other hand, is largely based on the design of AdminThemeReno, and essentially merges Reno theme's distinctive visual style with the feature set of AdminThemeUikit. As a result RenoKit – as Ryan calls this mash-up in his weekly post – should feel familiar for old users, yet at the same time it is clearly an upgrade in terms of both features and behaviour.

The new design also works as a example of how easy it is to develop new themes – or skins, if you prefer that term – for AdminThemeUikit. We'll leave the details for Ryan to explain in his post, but the gist of it is that the Reno design for AdminThemeUikit is essentially just one custom LESS file, no more and no.. uhm, less.

For more details about the weekly updates and particularly the visual upgrade of AdminThemeUikit – including a whole bunch of screenshots – don't forget to check out Ryan's weekly post at the processwire.com blog. Thanks!

Weekly poll: what kind of hosting do you use for your ProcessWire websites?

In the footsteps of our previous poll, in which we asked you folks about the PHP versions you host ProcessWire on, this week we'd like to expand on this theme a bit. In a nutshell we're asking you what kind of hosting do you use for your ProcessWire websites: do you prefer shared hosting, do you self-manage your own virtual or dedicated servers, do you host your sites on the cloud, etc.

Once again you can make multiple choices, so feel free to pick all the options that apply to you. In case you'd like to provide a more in-depth answer, feel free to leave a comment on this post. You may also mention your web host by name, but please refrain from advertising, promotional codes, etc.

Note that we've split VPS and dedicated hosting into managed and self-managed hosting. If you're hosting your sites on a virtual server but paying for a third party (including the provider of the hosting environment) to manage it for you, you'll want to choose the managed option, but if you're handling the whole server yourself, then you're self-managing it.

  1.   Shared hosting (43%, 68)
  2.   Managed VPS hosting (13.3%, 21)
  3.   Self-managed VPS hosting (22.2%, 35)
  4.   Managed dedicated hosting (3.2%, 5)
  5.   Self-managed dedicated hosting (10.1%, 16)
  6.   Cloud based hosting (8.2%, 13)

Total votings: 158

Feel free to check out the poll archive for results of our earlier polls. All suggestions for future polls are more than welcome too. Thanks in advance for both your answer here and any additional suggestions or feedback you might have!

New module: PageListTrash by Robin Sallis

PageListTrash is a tiny new helper module developed by Robin Sallis. In a nutshell this module makes a small tweak to ProcessWire's admin GUI, allowing non-superusers to trash pages directly from the page tree. This shortcut shares both the look and feel of the original superuser-only feature.

Whether or not you want this feature to be available for non-superusers is really up to you, and depends quite a bit on the context. That being said, it's nice to have an option for this, should this particular need ever come up.

Note that, as of this writing, what the PageListTrash module does is also possible using the AdminOnSteroids module. For those that don't know what that is, AdminOnSteroids is essentially a module that includes a huge collection of smaller tweaks.

Thanks to Robin Sallis for sharing another useful module with us – your contributions are always appreciated!

Site of the week: Folkestone Fringe

This time our site of the week title goes to Folkestone Fringe, a local event organiser based in Folkestone, UK. Founded in 2007, Folkestone Fringe represents Folkestone both nationally and internationally.

The responsive, ProcessWire powered site of Folkestone Fringe was designed and developed by PROGRESS, and you can find some additional details about the project from their website portfolio. The design of the site is quite modern, and all the different views are comprised of blocks or tiles. Though this site does admittedly look rather "full", it's not too overwhelming, and the end result is not just interesting, but also rather fun to use.

This site is based on the Bootstrap front-end framework and, behind the scenes, makes use of various JavaScript libraries ranging from jQuery to GSAP. In terms of performance the developers have taken a number of steps to make the site fast: the AIOM+ module is used to minify and combine static assets, the site is served to visitors from a Cloudflare proxy, and Cloudflare's Rocket Loader tool is used for speeding up JavaScript execution.

Overall this is a really well made site, and the somewhat unorthodox design seems well suited for the client's individual needs. Big thanks to folks at PROGRESS for sharing this site with us, and congratulations to the client, Folkestone Fringe!

Stay tuned for our next issue

That's it for the 177th issue of ProcessWire Weekly. We'll be back with more news, updates, and content Saturday, 7th of October. 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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