ProcessWire Weekly #396

Latest core updates: introducing the $pages->new() method and more!

In his latest weekly update Ryan dives into a new addition to the $pages API variable: $pages->new(). This method, which is now available to use in the latest dev version of ProcessWire, is similar to $pages->add() but works on selector strings:

$p = $pages->new("template=category, parent=/categories/, title=New Category");

Instead of having to remember which arguments to provide, this way you'll just have to write a selector string defining where your page should go and what template it should use etc. ProcessWire will handle the rest for you. In fact you can even omit some of the details, such as the template or the parent, in case those can be auto-detected based on template settings.

It's also possible to create new pages simply by specifying a path:

$p = $pages->new('path=/blog/posts/foo-bar-baz');

Or, alternatively, if you start the selector string with a forward slash, it will be assumed to contain a path:

$p = $pages->new('/blog/posts/foo-bar-baz');

For more details about the $pages->new() method and hands-on instructions for using it, as well as some related updates for the $pages->newPage() method, be sure to check out the weekly update from Ryan. Thanks!

Weekly forum highlights, tutorials, and other online resources

For this week we've gathered a list of support forum highlights and other useful and hopefully 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.

• PayPal Commerce Platform is a brand new third party module for ProcessWire by Marco Romano, currently under development and released as a beta version for testing. This module adds the ability to use the PayPal buy button, and more.
• Another fresh module, available for testing purposes, is ProcessSitemapSubmit by Sky Lundy. This module notifies (pings) search engines when content is changed in such a way that the sitemap should be parsed again.
• As the end of the year draws close, it's a good time to check out what's up in the world of web development. Szabesz recently shared a couple of resources which paint a vivid picture of our field: State of JS 2020, and the 2021 Web Almanac.
• Finally, another update that's not about ProcessWire, but rather a front-end framework that's become quite popular among ProcessWire users: Tailwind CSS just reached a new milestone with the release of version 3.

In case you're curious about what's new in the latest major version of Tailwind, here's a video walkthrough for all the neat new features:

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: Municipal Kaumberg in Austria

Our latest site of the week is that of Municipal Kaumberg, a beautiful town based in the district of Lilienfeld in the Austrian state of Lower Austria.

The new website of Kaumberg was built by Bernhard Baumrock, and introduced in a rather detailed showcase forum post earlier this week. As Bernhard explains in the post a lot of work was put into developing this site, and that really shows — the end result is one splendid website for sure!

Here are some behind the scenes highlights for this site:

• This site was built for scale and there's a lot of content available, including some subsites with their own color schemes. Content is managed via a custom-built module called RockMatrix, which is essentially an easy to use block builder.
• Site search is powered by another custom-built module, called RockSearch. This module makes it possible to index all types of content, and also has plenty of built-in logic for providing results in a meaningful order.
• To handle the amount of content available, this site features a slide-out menu, with built-in support for keyboard navigation for good measure.
• The site includes an event management system, which makes it possible to publish events as an online events calendar, as well as offer a printable PDF calendar based on live data.

For additional details, including some screenshots explaining exactly how the sub-sites are customized, be sure to check out the showcase forum thread.

All in all this is a very interesting website, and perhaps most importantly the site feels very intuitive and easy to use — always a key factor to consider on sites like this, which contain lots and lots of important content, and a widely varying target group of users.

Big thanks to Bernhard for sharing this project with us, and our congratulations to the client, Municipal Kaumberg, for their shiny new website!

Stay tuned for our next issue

That's it for the 396th issue of ProcessWire Weekly. We'll be back with more news, updates, and content Saturday, 18th 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!