ProcessWire Weekly #412

In the 412th issue of ProcessWire Weekly we'll cover the latest weekly update from Ryan, check out the Image Placeholder module, and more. Read on!

Welcome to the latest issue of ProcessWire Weekly! In this issue we'll dig into the latest weekly update from Ryan, in which he announces a new Pro module and covers some other updates from the past week. We've also got a brand new third party module to check out: Image Placeholder from Jürgen Kern

As always we'll also pick a brand new site of the week, this time belonging to a Finnish sports organization of some renown: Badminton Finland. Their new website has been online for a couple of weeks now, and it's a significant update to say the least — keep on reading for more details.

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 and a weekly update from Ryan

This week in his weekly update at the support forum Ryan announces the availability of a new Pro module he's been working on: FormAutoSaver. This module adds support for automatically saving front-end form submissions, as well as sending email reminders for users in case of abandoned form submissions.

For more information, be sure to check out the FormAutoSaver documentation page.

If you're a ProDevtools or FormBuilder user, the initial version of FormAutoSaver will be available for download from the VIP support forums. Please note, though, that it is currently considered a beta, so some quirks may still need to be ironed out.

In other news a new version of the commercial FormBuilder module (v52) is also now out, and there have been a couple of core updates as well. While there's nothing big feature-wise in the core this week, one thing is probably worth mentioning: as of the latest dev version, any known PHP 8.1 notices should now be taken care of.

That's all for our weekly update section this time. Be sure to check out the update from Ryan at the support forum for more details, as well as a brief schedule update about next stable release of ProcessWire. Thanks!

New module: Image Placeholder

Image Placeholder is a brand new third party module developed by Jürgen Kern. In a nutshell this module can be used to programmatically generate simple placeholder images with customizable size, background and text colors, font family, and text.

The module provides an easy to use API, displayed in its entirety below:

echo $modules->get('JkImagePlaceholder')
    ->setWidth(800)
    ->setHeight(400)
    ->setBackgroundColor('#dddddd')
    ->setTextColor('#000000')
    ->setText('Who needs pics anyway?')
    ->setFontSize(30)
    ->setFontFamily('fjallaone-regular')
    ->render(true);

Note that most of the arguments can be left out — you only need to provide the ones you want to modify. The module has default values for placeholder image properties, most of which can be defined globally via the modules configuration screen in the admin.

It's also possible to provide the module with custom fonts in TTF format, if you want to get really fancy with your placeholders. At the moment this module ships with a couple of ready to use fonts from Google Fonts: Fjalla One and Lobster.

When calling the render method with the optional boolean argument set to true, the module returns HTML image tag. If you leave this out or provide a falsy value instead, the render method returns base64 encoded image data instead.

Sample image generated by running the code above. Full disclosure: this version has gone through optipng, but the source image was only a few KB larger.

This module is not yet available via the modules directory, but at least in our tests it worked flawlessly (as you can see from the sample image above), so if you're keen to give it a try you can clone or download it directly from the JkImagePlaceholder GitHub repository. As always some extra caution is recommended when installing modules that are not in the official modules directory.

Big thanks to Jürgen for sharing this module with us — definitely a handy tool for cases where simple placeholder images are required!

Site of the week: Badminton Finland

Our latest site of the week belongs to Badminton Finland, which is the governing body for the sport of badminton in Finland, and the umbrella organization for local badminton clubs and associations.

Founded in 1954, Badminton Finland now has more than 100 member clubs and 7000 individual members through said clubs. The responsibilities of the organization include promoting and developing the sport of badminton in Finland, hosting competitions, and coaching and sending teams to international tournaments.

The website of Badminton Finland was designed and developed by the team at Avoine, and launched in March 2022. Current version, which replaced an earlier WordPress site, introduced a fully revamped design, a real-time search tool for finding local clubs with name, location, or postal code, AJAXified site search, tournament calendar integrated to a third party tournament management software — and many other useful features.

As for the implementation side, the front-end of this site is powered by the Tailwind CSS framework bundled with some useful JavaScript tools and libraries — such as Bartender, which makes implementing accessible off-canvas bars a breeze. Meanwhile, some of the modules powering things under the hood include cookie consent solution PrivacyWire, Wireframe output framework, and popular Pro modules FormBuilder and ProCache.

Our congratulations to the client, Badminton Finland, for their awesome new website, as well as the team behind the implementation for a job well done!

Stay tuned for our next issue

That's all for the 412th issue of ProcessWire Weekly. We'll be back with more news, updates, and content Saturday, 9th of April. 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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