ProcessWire Weekly #32

32nd issue of ProcessWire Weekly is here with latest modules, core updates and more. Read on!

With Christmas closing in, we'd like to take this opportunity to wish a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to everyone following these posts – and for everyone else working with ProcessWire too, you're all awesome!

It's been a great year for the project and the community, and we've seen a lot of development in many different forms. There's no doubt that 2015 will be just as big (if not bigger) year for ProcessWire, and we're lucky to be there to see it happen.

We won't be going anywhere just yet; there's still one more weekly issue for 2014, and 2015 is business as usual for us. Now, let's get this issue started!

Latest ProcessWire core updates

This week we've got more upgrades to the core comments features – two pretty big additions have made their way to the ProcessWire development branch:

  • Comments Manager bundled with the core package

Comments Manager is a new module and the latest iteration of Process Latest Comments. While Process Latest Comments was (and still is) a separate module, Comments Manager is bundled with the core package and, compared to its predecessor, boasts an upgraded UI and full support for latest comments additions.

Moving the Comments Manager to the core package makes a lot of sense, since it's pretty much a necessity for any site with comments in use. This way it's easy to keep track of all the new comments on your site without having to rely on notification emails or constantly browsing your site for new stuff.

  • Optional upvoting and downvoting for comments

Upvoting and downvoting feature has been added to the core comments. This feature is pretty self-explanatory – in a nutshell each comment gets upvote and downvote buttons, which trigger AJAX calls to the server. Nice and clean. Note that this feature is disabled by default; if you want to enable it, check out the settings for your comments field(s).

Please note that this is just a summary of the latest core additions. For more details, instructions, screenshots, etc. take a closer look at the latest blog post at processwire.com: Wrapping up the comments upgrades.

New module: Service IP Geolocation

Service IP Geolocation is a new module by Stephen Dickinson. It works in combination with external service db-ip.com and provides support for getting geolocation details for the visitor based on their IP address.

This module is useful for cases where you'd either want to offer content from applicable part of your site to visitors, or where you, for any other reason, need to identify the rough location of a user. One very real use case is the new EU VAT legislation, which requires you to gather two non-conflicting pieces of evidence in order to decide which VAT rate should be applied.

Thanks to Steve for making this module available for us!

New module: Matrix Fieldtype and Inputfield

Matrix Fieldtype and Inputfield is a new module combination by Kongondo. In a nutshell it allows you to easily store values in a matrix table, where rows and columns can be specified by either selector strings (via field settings) or using separate Page type field.

The value of this new field is that you can easily store things like product prices that depend on size and color, etc. Especially if "matrix table" isn't a familiar term, I'd suggest that you take a look at the very detailed forum post where Kongondo explains what the module is all about and how to work with it.

Thanks to Kongondo for another very valuable module – great stuff as always!

Please note that this module is still under development. It's fully functional, and we really wanted to mention it here, but you might want to wait for a while before adding it to a live site.

ProcessWire resources of the week

A short list of some of the latest ProcessWire resources, in no particular order:

Site of the week: novu, a web design and development company from Switzerland

NovuAccording to their own words, novu is a young, creative, and flexible web design and development company from Switzerland – and a quick look at the work samples is enough to convince at least yours truly that they can actually deliver on what they claim.

While the design of the site is very clean and simple, there are various little tricks that make it feel alive, and bold statements combined with large graphics and well thought out interactions make it stand out. On small screens, the site feels every bit as awesome as it does on a larger screen, which is always a big plus!

Thanks for sharing this site with us, novu – keep up the good work!

Stay tuned for our next issue

That's all for our 32nd issue. Thanks for staying with us and have a great weekend – we'll be back next week with more ProcessWire news and updates. For feedback, topic suggestions, etc. the feedback form is open 24/7.

Our next issue, ProcessWire Weekly #33, will be out Saturday, 27th of December. Until then, happy hacking with ProcessWire!

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