ProcessWire Weekly #197

Latest core updates: ProcessWire 3.0.92 adds zoom support for the Focus Point cropping feature

In his latest post at the processwire.com blog, Ryan introduces ProcessWire 3.0.92 – our latest development version now available via the dev branch at GitHub. This version expands the Focus Point cropping feature introduced back in January by adding GUI support for user-definable zoom setting.

While this feature should still be considered experimental, it is already fully functional. If you're using the dev branch, please give it a try and let us know if you experience any issues. As for credits, the JavaScript (or GUI) side of this feature was developed by Ryan, but for the PHP side we have Horst Nogajski – the developer behind our built-in Image Sizer Engine modules – to thank for.

Read more about the Focus Point cropping zoom support from the latest post at the processwire.com blog. Thanks!

New module: Code Blocks Textformatter

Code Blocks Textformatter is a simple Textformatter module cooked up to add support for Markdown style code blocks to text or textarea fields, including those using a RTE, such as CKEditor. It is not a full-blown Markdown module, though – if that's what you need, check out the TextformatterMarkdownExtra module bundled with ProcessWire.

This module adds support for two types of code blocks: fenced and inline. In both cases you would surround the code block with backticks, the main difference being that with fenced code blocks you add three backticks (`) before and after a longer code snippet, while inline code blocks need just one backtick before and after a single line of code.

Since the fenced code block support of this module is based on the GitHub code blocks documentation, you can read more about them there. This module doesn't currently include a built-in syntax highlighter, but the generated markup should be compatible with most JavaScript syntax highlighters – such as Prism.js or highlight.js.

You can grab this module directly from the TextformatterCodeBlocks GitHub repository. If you have any questions or require assistance on getting started, please head down to the TextformatterCodeBlocks support forum thread.

New site profile: REST API Site Profile for ProcessWire by Thomas Aull

One of the latest additions to the ProcessWire modules directory is the REST API site profile from Thomas Aull. This site profile is essentially an easy way to kickstart any custom project where you want to use ProcessWire mainly as a headless CMS.

While we say "easy", there are some steps required in order to get started with your own project, but Thomas has those documented at the REST API Profile GitHub repository, and for more details you can check out the REST API Pofile support forum thread. By default this site profile also has authentication – based on the PHP-JWT library – baked in, but you can disable it (at your own risk) in case that makes sense for your project.

Another thing to note is that this site profile includes a simple Vue.js SPA (single-page application), which serves as an example for a login page. You can use this application as a starting point for your own SPA, or you can simply ignore it in case you don't need a local front-end or you want to build one based on something else entirely.

Big thanks to Thomas Aull for sharing this site profile with us – although somewhat rough on the corners it definitely looks promising, and we appreciate all the effort you've put in it. Thank you, sir!

Site of the week: P. Jentschura

Our latest site of the week belongs to P. Jentschura, a manufacturer of basic body care products and natural, basic foods. Based in the city of Münster in Germany – with branches in both Switzerland and Mexico – P. Jentschura has a global reach, and as of this year they have been in the business for 25 years.

The P. jentschura website was created by Jens Martsch Design, and features a responsive layout based on the Foundation front-end framework. The front-end makes use of a number of current best practices, such as a scalable vector logo and responsive images with srcset attributes The typography of the site is well thought out, and the combination of light colours and generous use of white space makes the site feel strangely soothing.

While we couldn't spot any familiar third party modules on this site, one small highlight from the JavaScript side would be the lazysizes image lazy loader plugin – a tool that we've found quite useful in past projects as well. Another small but important technical highlight is the use of a free SSL certificate from Let's Encrypt, thanks to which all site traffic can be routed securely via HTTPS.

Congratulations to both the client, P. Jentschura, and the developer behind this site, Jens Martsch, for a lovely implementation. This is a really nice website, and we're happy to have it powered by ProcessWire!

Stay tuned for our next issue

That's it for the 197th issue of ProcessWire Weekly. We'll be back with more news, updates, and content Saturday, 24th 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!