ProcessWire Weekly #345

Weekly update from Ryan: ProFields Combo is now available!

This week in his weekly update for December 18th Ryan announced the availability of the Combo field — the ProFields module bundle addition we've been talking about for a few weeks now. While the announcement post itself is brief, there's also a very detailed documentation page for the Combo field.

A Combo field has “subfields” which each represent a secondary field within the Combo field. For instance, if your Combo field is named “mailing_address", then you might have these subfields:

• first_name
• last_name
• street
• city
• state
• zip

There's a lot of customizability available with this field. Behind the scenes the module essentially creates custom database schema based on your field selections, although it's actually possible to customize this schema directly via the Combo field settings.

The Combo field docs walk you through every key step in getting started with the field:

• Requirements (PHP, MySQL, and ProcessWire versions) and module installation instructions.
• Getting started and using the Combo fieldtype/inputfield: creating new fields, using them in your template code, modifying values via the API, etc.
• Notes and instructions specific to certain subfields, such as date/time fields, float/decimal fields, and single/multi selection fields.
• Instructions and terms for support and upgrades (which you'll automatically gain access to once you've purchased the ProFields package.)
• Advanced tips and tricks, including database schema optimizations and built-in PHPDoc generation primarily intended for IDEs.

For more details be sure to check out the Combo field documentation. Combo is a commercial module, available as a part of the ProFields module bundle. Thanks!

New module: Inputfield EasyMDE

Inputfield EasyMDE is a new third party module developed by Robin Sallis. This module makes it possible to use the EasyMDE editor for editing markdown content within fields in ProcessWire's admin.

EasyMDE itself is a fork of SimpleMDE. While it provides an easy to use toolbar — not unlike that which you get with the CKEditor inputfield — the content itself is basically markdown with some extra formatting. There's also a preview mode which provides a shortcut for checking out what the content would look like in its rendered form.

This module is in our modules directory, which means that you can install it via the built-in module installer in the admin, or download or clone it directly from the Inputfield EasyMDE GitHub repository.

If you're in need of a markdown editor that simplifies the process for content editors, whether or not they're familiar with the markdown format, this module is for you. Big thanks to Robin for developing it and sharing it with us!

Site of the week: Mattes Riglewski Wahl Architekten

Our latest site of the week belongs to Mattes Riglewski Wahl Architekten — an architectural firm with over 30 years of experience.

Based in Heilbronn, Germany, the company takes on various types of projects, viewing every single one as a new challenge and an opportunity to create something unique and meet the highest demands. You can read more about their vision, as well as see a list of the awards they've won through hard work and dedication, at the Büro page.

The website of Mattes Riglewski Wahl Architekten was built by designconcepts GmbH, and it's in facft the second site in a row that we've featured from this very productive Furtwangen, Germany based agency. Design wise the site is somewhat minimalistic, with gorgeous typography and plenty of quality photographs, and technically speaking it feels fast and responsive.

Behind the scenes this site makes use of the commercial ProCache module — and likely a few others that we have no idea about — while the front-end is based on the Uikit front-end framework. For performance optimization the site makes use of both srcset for modern responsive images, as well as JavaScript based lazy loading.

Big thanks to the folks at designconcepts GmbH for sharing this project with us, and our congratulations to the client, Mattes Riglewski Wahl Architekten, for their new ProcessWire powered website!

Stay tuned for our next issue

That's all for the 345th issue of ProcessWire Weekly. We'll be back with more news, updates, and content Saturday, 26th 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!