The 283rd issue of ProcessWire Weekly introduces ProcessWire 3.0.142 and FormBuilder v40, highlights some conference content, and features a new weekly poll continuing with the #processwireworks theme. Read on!
The big news this week is definitely ProcessWire 3.0.142, and in just a bit we're going to dive into the new and anticipated file and image field custom field support added with this release. We're also going to talk a little bit about the latest FormBuilder release, v40, which brings in multi-page forms (among other things).
Instead of our regular ProcessWire highlights we're going to feature some splendid content from the Concatenate Conference, and finally we're going to introduce the new website of Heide Gebäudetechnik – a German construction sector company specializing in heating, sanitary, air conditioning, and ventilation projects.
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!
Latest core updates: ProcessWire 3.0.142 and FormBuilder v40
This week we've got some pretty big core-related news from Ryan: as of 3.0.142 (which would be the latest version of the dev branch as of this writing) ProcessWire provides native support for custom fields for file and image fields. In his weekly blog post Ryan also introduces FormBuilder v40, which contains numerous new features and updates.
ProcessWire 3.0.142
Though ProcessWire 3.0.142 includes a number of fixes and improvements compared to 3.0.141 – check out our earlier issues for more details – the biggest feature included in this release is undoubtedly support for custom fields for file and image fields.
This feature has been on our roadmap for quite a while now, and it's actually such a big deal that there are modules dedicated for this purpose alone. What this feature means in practice is that now in addition to existing metadata fields (such as description and tags) you can define pretty much any custom data field for your file/image content:
What's even more exciting here is the sheer flexibility of the custom metadata model: the process involves adding a template for your custom fields (named after the field and prefixed with "field-", i.e. "field-my-image"), and behind the scenes these custom fields are all just regular ProcessWire fields.
Although there are some limitations, as all fields are not intended to be included within this kind of context, there are a lot of supported fieldtypes already that you can choose from, including text, textarea, and Page Reference fields.
FormBuilder v40
FormBuilder v40 is the latest incarnation of the commercial FormBuilder module. This release brings in plenty of new stuff, both all-new features you can start using right away, and behind the scenes updates that make the module even more robust, improve its performance, etc.
The biggest update included here is probably support for paginated forms: this feature has been requested numerous times over the years, and it has finally landed in the FormBuilder module. There's actually quite a lot of logic required for this to work flawlessly, and many of the updates included with this version are related to that.
Another new feature is something that Ryan calls forms in forms: you can now include existing forms within other forms, which makes it possible – for an example – to define a common address block that you can then reuse in as many forms as you want to. You can also make a form embed-only, which means that it can only be used within other forms, never as a stand-alone form.
Check out this week's blog post at processwire.com for more details regarding the file and image field custom field support, as well as a full list of new features and updates included with FormBuilder v40, of which we've only included a few in this post. Thanks!
Concatenate Conference 2019 – a free conference for African developers with speakers from around the world
For this issue I wanted to include a typical list of ProcessWire highlights, articles, and other relevant content, but in the end kind of got caught up watching the Concatenate Conference 2019 live stream from the October 11-12 event held at Nigeria.
... so, as a result instead of another big list of resources, this week our content highlight is going to be the live stream – or, at the time you're reading this post, more likely a recording – of the conference talks, which at the moment are available via YouTube:
As you may have guessed Concatenate isn't a ProcessWire conference, but you should definitely check them out if you're interested in web dev topics in general. There are some serious deep-dives into tech topics, as well as talks about non-technical topics, design, user experience and accessibility. My personal favorites were Art Direction + Design Systems by Mina Markham, and The Cost Of JavaScript in 2019 by Addy Osmani.
Have fun, and hope you can learn something from the talks – I sure did! :)
Weekly poll: working for someone else vs. being self-employed (#processwireworks)
This is the second poll in our #processwireworks series. This time we're going to focus on a different yet related topic: when you're working on ProcessWire projects, are you doing it as an employee, or do you employ yourself?
If it's the latter, do you have your own clients you work for – as a one-person-show or perhaps in collaboration with other freelancers – or do you still mostly work for other companies as a subcontractor?
Let us know if you're currently not working with ProcesWire on a professional basis as well. Even though the focus of the poll series is on ProcessWire professionals, it's also interesting to know how many of you are hobbyists doing something else to put bread on the table :)
As always there may be something important we missed, so if you think that your status can't be reasonably described with the existing options alone, please let us know and we'll be happy to add more choices to the mix. Thanks in advance!
- I'm an employee working for a company (25.2%, 26)
- I'm a freelancer working primarily as a subcontractor (16.5%, 17)
- I'm self-employed and work mostly on my own client work (47.6%, 49)
- I run a business, employing others (6.8%, 7)
- I don't currently do any professional ProcessWire work (3.9%, 4)
Total votings: 103
As for last week's poll, we're actually going to do something atypical and leave that one open. So, in case you missed our last week's poll on remote work, feel free to drop in your answer – it's still open, and we'd still like to hear your answer. For those curious about what the stats look like so far, here's our current status:
Though the final results may differ a bit, what's interesting about the statistics so far is that the vast majority of those responding to the poll so far – almost half, in fact – have mentioned that they work remotely full time, or almost full time. That's quite a number, especially if you count those who work remotely but do it less often as well: in that case we're over the 90% mark.
It's interesting to see how this poll series unrolls, so be sure to answer this week's poll as well! As always, thanks for your time and effort :)
Feel free to check out the poll archive for results of our earlier polls. All suggestions for future polls are more than welcome too. Thanks in advance for both your answer here and any additional suggestions or feedback you might have.
Site of the week: Heide Gebäudetechnik
Our latest site of the week belongs to Heide Gebäudetechnik – gebäudetechnik as in building technology, for our English-speaking readers.
Heide Gebäudetechnik is a German construction sector company specializing in heating, sanitary, air conditioning, and ventilation services. Their team of skilled craftsmen has completed more than 35 projects since 2011, have served major customers such as Amazon and DHL, and pride themselves in making fulfilling the individual wishes and expectations of their customers a priority.
The Heide Gebäudetechnik website was developed by André Herdling and zart & zornig. It boasts a clean and well organized design, and the content is also neatly put together and nicely architected. One way to describe the look and feel of the site would definitely be "corporate", although "professional" is perhaps even more fitting. – and, once again, professional doesn't mean boring: there's plenty of color here, and various visual details, transitions, and animated elements make it feel quite lively.
The contents of the site are built using a block builder type solution, where each page consist of a collection of different content blocks (or sections). When we had a quick peek into what makes the site tick, we found out that the front-end of the site is powered by the Bootstrap front-end framework, and the site and its assets are minified, cached, and served using the ProCache Pro module.
Big thanks to André Herdling for sharing this project with us, the team behind the implementation for trusting ProcessWire as their platform of choice – and of course the client, Heide Gebäudetechnik. Congratulations for your new ProcessWire powered website, it's looking really good!
Stay tuned for our next issue
That's all for the 283rd issue of ProcessWire Weekly. We'll be back with more news, updates, and content Saturday, 19th of October. 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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