ProcessWire Weekly #342

Latest core updates: ProcessWire 3.0.169

In his latest weekly update Ryan announced our latest dev release, ProcessWire 3.0.169. In comparison to ProcessWire 3.0.168, this version includes a total of 19 new commits, the majority of which focus on mall fixes and improvements.

In the past week alone there have been 9 new commits, and some that might be of interest to you folks as well:

• $modules->getModule() supports two new options: configOnly returns module in a state where config data is populated but the init method has not been called yet, while configData allows passing in custom config data to the module.
• ProcessCommentsManager now provides an option to change user's notification settings, and ProcessUser now supports Lister bookmarks.
• $sanitizer->removeMB4() now accepts additional options, including replaceWith for a default character to replace MB4 characters with and version to specify the version of the method to use (default is 2; use value 1 to access the old version.)
• Numerous updates for the Comments field: support for searching flags property in FieldtypeComments::find(), new field configuration option to include comment text in notification emails (useNotifyText), FieldtypeComments::getNotifyEmails() and Comment::getFormattedCommentText() methods, as well as various smaller fixes and additions.

For more details check out the dev branch commit log for the past week. If you have any questions or feedback regarding this week's updates — or other updates for 3.0.169 — don't hesitate to post them via the related support forum thread. Thanks!

New admin theme: Admin Theme Canvas

This week we've got something of a rare treat: a brand new admin theme called Admin Theme Canvas. Although Canvas extends the default Uikit admin theme and thus is also based on the Uikit front-end framework, visually it provides a very different experience. Admin Theme Canvas in a nutshell:

• Minimal black and white admin theme.
• Fixed masthead navigation.
• Direct access to page tree navigation inside page dropdown.
• Less distraction for editors.
• Options to customise the UI.

This admin theme was designed and developed by Jan Ploch — big thanks to Jan for building it and sharing it with us! If you have any questions or suggestions regarding this theme, head down to the Admin Theme Canvas support forum thread.

New module: MatomoWire

MatomoWire is a new module developed by Joshua Kin. This module is essentially a tool for embedding Matomo — formerly known as Piwik — tracking on a ProcessWire website, while also making it really easy to allow users to opt out of any unwanted tracking:

• MatomoWire integrates with the PrivacyWire cookie management module. If you have both modules enabled, you can choose to only enable Matomo tracking in case the user has already accepted tracking cookies.
• In case you don't have PrivacyWire, another option is the opt-out iframe provided by your Matomo installation.

In case you're interested in embedding Matomo on your site, this module is an easy way to handle that in a privacy friendly way — and if you're not quite sure what Matomo has to offer over Google Analytics, you may find this feature comparison table helpful. Note, though, that it's from Matomo, so you may want to take it with a grain of salt.

MatomoWire is still in alpha stage and not yet available from our modules directory, so some extra caution is recommended. In the meantime you can get it directly from the MatomoWire GitHub repository. Big thanks to Joshua for his work on this project!

Site of the week: Chäs & Co

Our latest site of the week belongs to a Swiss company called Chäs & Co — a company that deals in all sorts of cheese, as well as other quality food products.

Founded in 1983, today the products of Chäs & Co find their way into specialty shops and restaurants all over Switzerland. Their new website was built by Oliver Michel of jom mensch + computer and in addition to a rather unique design the site also features some very intresting features, both on the front-end and on the backend — for an example a handy product search and filtering tool and on-the-fly PDF generation.

The front-end of this site is custom-built and doesn't make use of a full-blown front-end framework. PDF files are generated using the mPDF PHP library, and behind the scenes data is moved between a separate database and this site using a modified version of the ImportPagesCSV module.

From the case story published at the ProcessWire support forum you'll find more details about this site, as well as a more complete list of modules, PHP and JavaScript libraries, etc. Big thanks to Oliver Michel for sharing this project with us, and our congratulations to Chäs & Co for their new website!

Stay tuned for our next issue

That's all for the 342nd issue of ProcessWire Weekly. We'll be back with more news, updates, and content Saturday, 5th 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!