ProcessWire Weekly #43

Latest updates to ProcessWire and ProFields (2.5.22)

Ryan has published a new blog post about latest core and ProFields updates, and this time we've got plenty of those, to say the least.

Image management improvements: adding captions and uploading images via image selection modal window

First of all, we've got more improvements to RTE field image management:

• Support for adding caption texts to images. Made possible by new, semantic HTML5 elements, this feature automatically wraps images with <figure> elements and adds <figcaption> elements to contain caption texts.
• Support for uploading new images directly from the image selection modal window to any image fields on the current page. This new feature is both a workflow improvement and a very helpful addition especially for new ProcessWire users.

Selector update: multiple values support for has_parent

Another weekly core update adds multiple-value support for has_parent. While this may be a relatively small update, it can also be a useful extension to our already awesome selector engine, as demonstrated below:

// find all pages from multiple site areas with just one selector:
$products = $pages->find("has_parent=/products|/future-products, ...");

Updates to commercial ProFields Textareas module

One of Ryan's own commercial modules, ProFields Textareas, has just received an important update that adds support for all sorts of inputfield types, and also provides full multi-language support.

Unless you're already familiar with ProFields modules, they're worth checking out. Not only are they great timesavers, especially in larger projects, but they're also reasonably priced, and an easy way to support Ryan's continued work on the ProcessWire project.

Parsedown library for Textformatter Markdown Extra

Our final core update for the week adds Parsedown support for the Markdown Textformatter bundled with ProcessWire. In addition to being fast and consistent, Parsedown also introduces support for GitHub Flavored Markdown, which most GitHub users are already familiar with.

As always, this is just a summary of the updates. For full descriptions, usage examples, etc. please visit Ryan's latest processwire.com blog post.

We're getting noticed!

This week we received some pretty amazing news. German computer magazine c't has just published an article about ProcessWire, and after further discussion Tuts+ has reversed their earlier negative decision, and is going to commission tutorials on ProcessWire, after all.

This isn't the first time we've gotten attention, of course – ProcessWire has been featured on multiple occasions in CMS Critic and CMSWire, mentioned by Smashing Magazine in their Twitter stream, php[architect] has commissioned an article about us, etc.

Regardless, this is great news for us; Tuts+ is well-known for their quality tutorials, and c't is a huge name among German-speaking audiences:

The magazine is the second most popular German language computer magazine with a sold circulation of about 315,000 (as of March 2011; printed circulation: 419,000). With 241,000 subscriptions it is the computer magazine with the most subscribers in Europe. (source)

New beta module by Soma: Pollino

Word of warning: this module is still in beta, so please don't expect it to be 100% perfect yet. (Being developed by Soma means that it's just a matter of time, though.)

Pollino is a new module developed by Philipp 'Soma' Urlich with the intention of easily creating polls for ProcessWire sites. While still a work in progress, the feature set already looks very promising:

• Each poll is a page, and each answer is a child page. Not only does this let Pollino benefit from all the great API features of ProcessWire, but it also allows you to customise your polls and their content easily using ProcessWire's native tools.
• You'll want to limit each poll to one vote per voter, and Pollino provides couple of options for this: cookies with an expiration date, IP (optionally with User Agent string added), and regular ProcessWire authentication.
• Pollino provides an API of its own for outputting polls. Provided API methods are hookable, and you can easily customise the output of the module to your liking.
• Multi-language support is included by default, of course.

If you're interested in giving this module a try, you can read more about it from the related ProcessWire support form thread, grab the code from GitHub, and see it in action on the demo site hosted on the lightning.pw platform.

Site of the week: New Focus Recordings

New Focus Recordings is "an artist led collective label featuring releases in contemporary music of many stripes, as well as new approaches to older repertoire." The site, built by Nibiri, is introduced in the case story at the processwire.com forums by the author himself.

The site is focused on presenting artists and their albums. In the catalogue section one can search and filter albums using an extensive search tool, albums are linked to other related albums, and one can even listen to song samples or buy full albums via the site (for a fixed $9.99 fee per digital download).

Other notable features include the pop out player – essentially another way to listen to song samples – and the New Focus Radio, which allows you to listen to full songs while browsing the site. Separate press section allows site admins to give members of the press extended access to albums and related content – a feature described in more detail in the case story.

Congratulations for both New Focus Recordings and Nibiri for building such a great site, and thanks for sharing this with us!

Stay tuned for our next issue

That's it for the 43rd issue of ProcessWire Weekly. We'll be back with more news, updates, and content next Saturday, 14th of March. 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!