ProcessWire Weekly #192

In the processwire.com blog this week: introducing the official 2018 roadmap

The latest post at the processwire.com blog focuses on two main things: taking a look back at what we achieved during the year 2017, and outlining the currently planned development steps for the year 2018 via a newly refreshed roadmap.

We covered many of the 2017 achievements already in the 190th issue of ProcessWire Weekly, but Ryan's list in this week's blog post is obviously more in-depth, and Ryan has also separated last years' achievements into two categories: those that were in the 2017 roadmap – and those that came from outside our original plans.

Here are some of the things we're hoping to achieve during the year 2018:

• Release ProcessWire 3.1 and begin work on our next release, ProcessWire 3.2. The latter is where most of the 2018 roadmap items will come together.

• Begin redesigning and rebuilding of the processwire.com sites – which includes the modules directory and cheatsheet sites as well.

• Replace the classic site profile with the Uikit-based Regular site profile and apply continued improvements to our new Uikit-based admin theme, AdminThemeUikit.

• Improve our image tools and file/image fields with predefined crops, more image actions, custom properties, and so on.

• As always: continued performance and security optimization to the core, and continued improvements and optimizations to core API variables and functions.

For more roadmap items and more detailed descriptions of the ones mentioned here, don't forget to check out Ryan's weekly post at the processwire.com blog. In case you have ideas and/or feedback related to the roadmap, feel free to participate in the discussion at our support forum too. Thanks!

New module: CKEditor Link Files

One of the most recent additions to our modules directory is the CKEditor Link Files module from Robin Sallis.

This module provides a couple of shortcuts for inserting file links into a CKEditor enabled field in the Admin by adding a new menu item, which in turn opens a list of files, from where you can either embed a single file or a list of all files connected to current page with a single click:

• By clicking a menu item click you can insert a link to that file at the current cursor position.
• By default the filename is used as link text, but if you alt-click the item, the file description is used instead – or if you have already selected a part of your text, the module will use that as the link text.
• There's a separate link for inserting links to all files simultaneously. In this case the links are inserted as an unordered list with filenames – or descriptions, if you alt-clicked this menu item – being used for link texts.
• The file dropdown menu is built with asynchronous JavaScript request, which means that new files will be available right away – with the sole exception of descriptions requiring a page save first.

For more details, check out the dedicated support forum thread. You can grab this module from the modules directory, or clone or download it directly from the GitHub repository. Big thanks to Robin Sallis for sharing yet another useful module with us!

New module: ProcessWire Kickstart

Word of warning: this module is still in alpha stage, so use it at your own risk. Note also that the installation process allows unauthenticated file uploads, which means that you should avoid using it on a web accessible domain unless you know what you're doing.

ProcessWire Kickstart is a newly released module from Bernhard Baumrock. Though we use the term "module" here, it is actually a combination of a Process module Process Kickstart and a separate kickstart.php file, which is essentially an automated online installer for ProcessWire.

In a nutshell this module allows you to install ProcessWire in a fully automated way. By defining all the required settings within a PHP file (called kickstartfile) and opening the kickstart.php file on a browser you can easily set up ProcessWire. The entire process is quite intuitive, but you can read more about the required steps from the ProcessWire Kickstart support forum thread.

In addition to the automated ProcessWire installer, ProcessWire Kickstart adds support for a concept called recipes – PHP files executed via the Process Kickstart module after ProcessWire has been installed. Recipes can be used for anything from installing your preferred modules to creating page structures or setting up your templates directory.

For more details about this module, check out the support forum thread. Big thanks to Bernhard for sharing his work with us – this module looks really promising!

Site of the week: Knight Moves

Our latest site of the week belongs to the Belgian service design company Knight Moves – a part of the Leap Forward company network.

With years of experience under their collective belts, the service portfolio of Knight Moves includes research, prototyping, service simulations, and service design – and they can also take care of the development phase of a digital product.

Design wise the Knight Moves website is quite impressive: it has an intriguing classic look to it, gorgeous photography combined with absolutely beautiful – yet very much readable – typography, and various tasteful transitions and animations. Layouts of this site combine various block styles and full-width carousels. All in all I'd say that this is one of the best looking ProcessWire sites I've come across in a while.

Behind the scenes the site is using the AIOM+ module for its minification needs, and a range of JavaScript libraries on the front-end – jQuery, parallax.js, WOW.js, slick, and so on. As a minor curiosity, this site is also connected to the third party analytics and feedback platform Hotjar.

Congratulations to Knight Moves and the ones apparently responsible for the actual build – another Leap Forward company called Little Miss Robot – for a job well done. This site is absolutely gorgeous!

Stay tuned for our next issue

That's it for the 192nd issue of ProcessWire Weekly. We'll be back with more news, updates, and content Saturday, 20th of January. 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!