ProcessWire Weekly #195

ProcessWire 3.0.90 resolves various issues and adds ImageSizerEngineAnimatedGif to the core

The latest core update news from Ryan come in the form of a forum post rather than a whole new blog entry, mainly because there are no major additions to introduce this week. The latest dev version of ProcessWire, 3.0.90, focuses on resolving open GitHub issues instead, and if you want to review the full changelog from the past week you can use the GitHub compare tool.

Now, while we say that there were no major additions, that's not entirely true. There is, in fact, one pretty interesting new addition this week – and that is a new core module called ImageSizerEngineAnimatedGif. What this newly added Imagesizer module does is that it allows ProcessWire to resize GIF animations while still keeping those animations intact, instead of the resized versions ending up just a single frame (as it used to).

For more details about this week's core updates, check out the ProcessWire 3.0.90 core updates thread on our support forum. Big thanks to Horst Nogajski for his tireless work on improving the image management capabilities of ProcessWire, and particularly for contributing the newly added ImageSizerEngineAnimatedGif core module!

New module: Image Megapixels

Now, our first new module for this issue is called Image Megapixels. This handy little module, built and released by Robin Sallis, adds a new API method for resizing images to specific megapixel size – or, in other words, to cover same amount of screen estate, regardless of image aspect ratios.

In case you're still wondering how this differs from the features already provided by ProcessWire, such as the maxSize() method of Pageimage objects, think about it this way: while maxSize() is great for defining maximum dimensions for images in terms of both width and height, a square image will always cover most screen estate, while a very narrow image will cover considerably less.

Image Megapixels and the megapixels() method it provides, on the other hand, allow all images to cover equal visibility, regardless of their aspect ratios:

For more details about – and API usage instructions for – this module, check out the Image Megapixels support forum thread, or download the module directly from the Image Megapixels GitHub repository. Thanks to Robin Sallis for sharing yet another useful module with us – great work as always!

New module: Blackhole

Our second new module for this week is called Blackhole, developed by flydev. This module is essentially a ProcessWire implementation of the Blackhole, a stand-alone PHP security tool developed by Jeff Starr.

What Blackhole does is that it sets up a kind of a honeypot for bad bots and crawlers that fail to follow the rules defined by your robots.txt file. The concept is rather clever: include a hidden link to a page you've denied access to in a robots.txt file, and once a visitor (presumably a bot not following robots.txt rules) enters said page, add them to a blocklist and prevent any further contact with your site.

Please note that this module is still a bit rough on the edges, so you should carefully review what it does and how it does it before getting started. Another thing to note is that this module will not guarantee that no bad bots can enter your site – rather than that, it's an easy to use tool for reducing traffic from bad bots, leechers, and other uninvited guests.

Read more about this module and the steps you need to take to set it up from the Blackhole module support forum thread. Big thanks to flydev for your work on this module – keep up the great work!

Site of the week: Integrify

Our latest site of the week belongs to a company called Integrify – the makers of a low-code workflow automation and management platform. You can read more about Integrify from their about page, but the company started nearly fifteen years ago, and since then they have been dedicated to solving workflow and business process problems for their clients – including major companies such as Red Bull, Sony Entertainment Network, GlaxoSmithKline, and BP.

We came upon the Integrify website through a certain thread on our support forum, and found the whole experience on this site well thought out and rather enjoyable: the site is beautiful but not over-designed; the layouts and imagery fit the site precisely, and content in general is top notch; and, finally, the product introductions are quite informative, partly thanks to the animations designed to complenent the text descriptions. In short, this is a site that was clearly designed with specific goals in mind – and it does a great job in achieving those.

The fully responsive front-end of this site is based on the Bootstrap framework, the main font is Open Sans – embedded via the Google Fonts service – and the site also integrates with the HubSpot platform. The one and only third party module clearly visible on the front-end of the site is the video embedding tool Textformatter Video Embed, while the rest of the behind-the-scenes stuff remains – well, behind the scenes. As it is supposed to.

Congratulations to Integrify for having such a lovely website – and for anyone reading this and interested in solving issues related to workflows and/or business processes, definitely check out the Integrify platform. Their website includes a pretty extensive resources section with content ranging from eBooks and blog posts to videos and webinars, so we'd recommend checking that out too!

Stay tuned for our next issue

That's it for the 195th issue of ProcessWire Weekly. We'll be back with more news, updates, and content Saturday, 10th of February. 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!