ProcessWire Weekly #239

In the 239th issue of ProcessWire Weekly we take a closer look at ProcessWire 3.0.121 RC1, introduce a third party module called FormBuilderMultiplier, and showcase a site of the week belonging to digital solutions provider Spiria.

Welcome to the latest issue of ProcessWire Weekly. This time we're thrilled to introduce the first release candidate version for a new master version – ProcessWire 3.0.121. In his weekly post Ryan also shares some interesting news regarding upcoming, work in progress Pro modules, and more.

In other news we're going to take a closer look at a new third party module FormBuilder Multiplier. This module integrates with the FormBuilder Pro module and makes building complex forms a breeze – but more about that in just a bit.

This week we've got a really great new site of the week to share, belonging to the digital solutions provider Spiria. The site is accompanied by a very detailed case story as well, so we'd definitely recommend checking it out.

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!

In the processwire.com blog this week: ProcessWire 3.0.121 RC1 and latest Pro module updates from Ryan

In this week's blog post at the processwire.com blog we introduce ProcessWire 3.0.121, now available via the dev branch at GitHub. As we mentioned in last week's update, 3.0.121 is also the first release candidate (RC1) for our next master branch version.

What's new in ProcessWire 3.0.121?

For this week's release the focus was on resolving any outstanding issues from GitHub, and the same plan applies to coming week – or weeks – as well.

While Ryan mentioned that he'd prefer to focus on issues only applicable to the dev branch, according to him there haven't really been any of those – which, of course, is a good sign. In essence it seems that our current work-in-progress release candidate might already be just as stable as the current master version.

Latest Pro module updates

In addition to the core updates, this week's blog post contains some Pro module related news. Here's a brief summary – for more details you should check out the full post at the proceswire.com blog:

  • Clear image variations is a new PageAction module for ListerPro. This one is already available for all ListerPro subscribers, and enables you to clear variation files of images on any pages. This, of course, is particularly useful if you have unused image variations just lying around, consuming extra space.
  • ProSiteSearch is a new module currently under development, and once released it'll likely be part of the ProDevTools module package. This is what powers the site search of the new processwire.com website – you've probably already seen it if you've been following our updates, but if you haven't, feel free to check out last week's blog post for more details.
  • Another work-in-progress module is ProMailer. This is a newsletter module, and actually the solution we've been using to send out the weekly newsletters for years now. Recently Ryan has been working on polishing it a bit in order to get it out there for others to use as well.

For more details on ProcessWire 3.0.121 and the Pro module updates mentioned here, don't forget to check out Ryan's weekly blog post. Also, as a quick reminder, if you're using the dev branch in your projects, be sure to report any issues you see, so that we can get them fixed before the next master release. Thanks!

New module: FormBuilderMultiplier

FormBuilderMultiplier is a new – or work in progress, really, considering that it's tagged with "alpha" label in the support forum – module from BitPoet. Originally developed for a company intranet where a lot of forms require multiple repeatable field groups, this module extends FormBuilder by making regular fieldgroups... well, repeatable.

In other words this module ...

  • Adds an option to make a regular Fieldgroups repeatable, while letting you limit the number of instances of a Fieldgroup on the form.
  • Adds an "Add row" button for creating another instance of the Fieldgroup's fields, and a counter suffix at the end of every affected field's label.
  • Stores the entered values just like regular fields, and makes them available in preview and email notifications.
  • Supports most text based fields, textareas and selects. More complex fieldtypes may also be supported, but have not been properly tested as of yet.
FormBuilderMultiplier in action. GIF animation by the author of the module, BitPoet.

While the module is already very much in usable state, the "alpha" state of the module is mostly related to the fact that it hasn't been widely tested yet. Additionally some known drawbacks include the code resizing form iframe not being particularly clean, and saving repeatable form items as Pages (using Repeaters for the data) not being supported yet.

All in all, if you're dealing with complex FormBuilder forms on your site or in your application, this module is definitely worth checking out. Big thanks to BitPoet for sharing it with us!

Site of the week: Spiria

Our latest site of the week belongs to Spiria – a Canada and US based company providing quality services to create custom digital solutions. Spiria recently migrated their own site from Drupal to ProcessWire, and have published a blog post explaining why the migration had to happen and how it was done. They've clearly given this plenty of thought, and in the post covers many important topics, so we'd definitely recommend checking it out.

Design wise the website of Spiria is truly beautiful. The color schemes is bold and dark, which in itself gives the site a very professional look and feel – yet at the same time there are plenty of colorful images sprinkled all over the site. Generous use of whitespace makes the site feel less cramped, the typography is top-notch, and various unobtrusive yet noticeable transition and animation effects make the site a tad more lively.

This website is multi-lingual, runs on an nginx setup, and includes a set of powerful third party modules, such as ProCache, ProFields, and ListerPro. That being said, when it comes to behind the scenes stuff we'd really urge you to check out the blog post – or the showcase forum thread, which has covers essentially the same content but has some related discussion as well.

Indeed, if ProcessWire can be considered as a CMS in its own right, it also offers all the advantages of a CMF (Content Management Framework). Unlike other solutions, the programmer is not forced to follow the proposed model and can integrate his ways of doing things.

— Guy Verville, Director of Web Strategy at Spiria Digital Inc.

Again, please check out the blog post or the showcase forum thread – there's a lot of great content in them. Our congratulations to the folks at Spiria for a job well done, and big thanks for sharing this site with us, along with their valuable opinions and experiences learned from the migration project itself!

Stay tuned for our next issue

That's it for the 239th issue of ProcessWire Weekly. We'll be back with more news, updates, and content Saturday, 15th of December. 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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