ProcessWire Weekly #254

Latest core updates

This week's core updates, which are already available via the dev branch, include a total of 16 commits and mainly fix smaller issues in the core and make some additional minor improvements. Here's a brief summary of what's new and changed in the commits from the past week:

• The (practically invisible on Mac but visible on Windows) "L Sep" character is now automatically removed from Textarea fields when the HTML content-type is used, and by CKEditor inputfields input-time.
• When editing a page using the ?field=field_name or ?fields=field_1,field_2 parameters in the URL, said parameters now remain in the URL after the page has been saved as well.
• Spinner displayed over image while uploading is now removed in case that the upload fails, making the UI a tad more intuitive.
• PageFinder now properly identifies a situation in which current user has changed on the fly programmatically, adjusting the (cached) allowed template part of SQL queries automatically.
• Text inputfield now supports a new option called "noTrim". When set to true, this prevents the inputfield from automatically trimming spaces from before and after the inserted value.
• Support for a special key page.sort has been added to selectors. Since sort is a reserved word in selector strings, this key can be used for querying pages matching their literal "sort" properties.
• URL segments can now contain space characters – but only if the value of the pageNameCharset config setting is "UTF8" and spaces have been specifically allowed using the pageNameWhitelist config option.

... and other minor fixes and improvements, including one related to Selector inputfield "Created by user" and "Modified by user" handling, and another related to handling of multi-language values in the backend when the order of languages had been altered.

Additionally, some small UI improvements were added to the Admin GUI and the Uikit Admin Theme, and a few small typos were fixed in our auto-generated documentation.

There's no new core version this week, but if you're using the dev branch, you can pull the latest version from GitHub to get access to these updates right away. We'll likely cover some of these in more detail once a new version is released.

Weekly forum highlights, tutorials, and other online resources

Here's a list of support forum highlights and other useful and/or interesting resources. As always, please let us know if there's anything important we've missed, so that we can include it in one of our future issues.

• To kick things off, we'd like to share a recent case story: GoodKidsClothes.com is a blog site recently migrated from WordPress to ProcessWire, and the case story for it is rather long and detailed, containing plenty of pointers for things that were taken into consideration while working on this project. A great read overall!
• RepeaterFlex is a tool with certain similarities with the RepeaterMatrix module, although behind the scenes there are quite a few differences. The demo site provides some documentation for the tool, which was recently mentioned in the context of the Tofahrn Foto case story as well.
• Here's something that users of the User Groups module may find interesting: BitPoet recently posted about adding support for defining groups that may add new pages using a specific template using the TemplateGroups module. Really nice addition – thank you, BitPoet!
• While we're on the topic of module upgrades and additions, Chris Thomson has released a new fork of the WireMailMailgun module. This is as an upgrade over the existing module, adding new features and cleaning up module code. In case you're planning to use the Mailgun service, definitely check Chris' module out.
• Following a feature request at GitHub, Robin wrote a little tutorial for finding the fields that use a Textformatter module. There are two approaches detailed in the post: one for listing Textformatters and the fields they are used by, and other for adding a fields section to Textformatter configuration screen.
• Another tutorial for this week is one authored by Guy Verville of Spiria, labeled "Tutorial: How to create a form in ProcessWire". In his tutorial Guy explains how one can utilize the built-in components of ProcessWire to build a custom form, complete with validation and data processing steps.
• Finally, here's a quick sneak peek on an early work in progress version of a visualization module that Kongondo has been working on. It's a tool for creating custom visualizations (as in charts) for your website, and despite the apparent early stage of the module, it's looking rather promising!

If you're interested in ProcessWire news, discussions, and updates, there's always something going on at the support forum. Since we're only able to include a tiny selection of all that in our weekly updates, head down to the forum for more.

Site of the week: Bridges - music connects

Our latest site of the week is called Bridges - music connects. Bridges is a project that unites musicians with or without refugee and migration background through shared passion for music. It is a medium where strangers become friends, dedicated to a musical dialogue that is shaped by a variety of cultural backgrounds.

The website for Bridges was developed by Gregory Staab and designed by Eliane Hobbing. It is a traditional yet stylish responsive site with plenty of gorgeous photography. The site is multi-lingual – German and English – and includes a built-in event calendar feature. There are also various photo galleries, and pages are further livened up using embedded videos.

From the outside it appears that the site is largely powered by hand-made features, and there are no obvious traces of third party modules in the front-end. CSS and JavaScript wise there's also plenty of custom stuff here, so overall not much for us to talk about here. The important thing, of course, is that it all comes together rather nicely, and the site works well on all types and sizes of devices.

Big thanks to Gregory for sharing this site with us, and our congratulations and best wishes to the Bridges - music connects project. It's always a pleasure to feature a site that has an interesting background story, and in this case that's definitely what's going on in here. If you're in the Frankfurt area, definitely check their events out as well!

Stay tuned for our next issue

That's it for the 254th issue of ProcessWire Weekly. We'll be back with more news, updates, and content Saturday, 30th of March. 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!