ProcessWire Weekly #432

In the 432nd issue of ProcessWire Weekly we'll check out the latest weekly update from Ryan, introduce a new third party ProcessWire module called PageTableNext, and more. Read on!

Welcome to the latest issue of ProcessWire Weekly. This week we'll kick things off by checking out the latest weekly update from Ryan, in which he introduces new versions of a few Pro modules. We're also going to take a closer look at a brand new third party module PageTableNext, which provides an interesting way to handle content blocks.

In other news we've also got a new weekly poll for our readers, asking you folks about the PHP versions you use to host ProcessWire sites, and — as always — a splendid new site of the week. 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!

Weekly update from Ryan: new Pro module versions and some core updates

In this week's weekly update Ryan talks a bit about the weekly core updates, which — as Ryan explains in the post — are about keeping things nice and tidy in the core, and also keeping Ryan himself up to date with various parts of the core. Nothing major in there this week, so we'll cut to the chase: new versions of a couple of popular Pro modules.

(If you're curious and would like to check out this week's core updates in detail, feel free to browse through the weekly commit log for the dev branch at GitHub.)

New versions of Table and Combo Pro modules

Table and Combo are both commercial Pro modules developed by Ryan, and they both share a similar purpose: storing flexible, customizable data without the need for a new page per each data item (or row). Long story short, both modules do excellent work in many ways, but one thing that they've lacked so far is support for storing files.

With Table v23 and Combo v9 that limitation is finally gone:

  • Table version 23 adds support for storing singular file per column, and each table row can contain as many file columns as needed. Compared to regular file/image fields the set of features available in Table are limited, but the front-end value of a file column is a familiar and fully functional Pagefile or Pageimage object.
  • Combo version 9 adds similar support for storing files, but with fewer restrictions, allowing among other things singular or multiple files. Only features lacking (in comparison to regular file/image fields) are crop options and custom fields.

For more details about this week's Pro module updates, be sure to also check out the weekly update from Ryan at the support forum. Thanks!

New module: PageTableNext

PageTableNext is a new third party module from Neue Rituale. This module extends the core PageTable fieldtype and is, according to the authors, strongly inspired by an earlier third party module called PageTableExtended.

In a nutshell this module...

  1. provides a list of PageTable based content elements,
  2. enables the user to easily create, publish, move, delete, copy, and paste content elements in the backend, and
  3. allows elements to be rendered in the backend just like in the frontend by utilizing shadow DOM.

There's a lengthy list of features available via the module's directory entry, as well as detailed instructions for getting started with the module and developing new content elements. Since elements are rendered via ProcessWire's built-in field rendering, this part is already familiar, and the module provides loads of customization options.

If you'd like to give this module a try, you can install it via the built-in modules manager in the admin, or clone or download it directly from the PageTableNext GitHub repository. Big thanks to the folks at Neue Rituale for sharing this module with us!

Weekly poll: Which PHP version are you hosting your ProcessWire sites on?

We're back with one of our recurring polls: which PHP versions are you hosting your ProcessWire sites on? Last time we asked this question was back in 2020 (in issue #344) when PHP 8 had just been released, so it'll be interesting to see how far we've come.

While some operating systems provide updates for an extended period, officially 7.4 is a few months away from EOL, and 8.0 is just about to step from active development to security updates only stage. As such, we expect to see more votes for PHP 8 than 7 this time, but let's see how it goes!

(Oh, and we dropped 5.x versions from this poll. If you're still using PHP 5, for whatever reason that might be, you really should update right away.)

  1.   PHP 8.1 (24.8%, 27)
  2.   PHP 8.0 (30.3%, 33)
  3.   PHP 7.4 (35.8%, 39)
  4.   PHP 7.3 (2.8%, 3)
  5.   PHP 7.2 (3.7%, 4)
  6.   PHP 7.1 or anything older than that (2.8%, 3)

Total votings: 109

Feel free to check out the poll archive for results of our earlier polls. All suggestions for future polls are more than welcome too. Thanks in advance for both your answer here and any additional suggestions or feedback you might have.

Site of the week: Metzgerhandwerk Bayern

Our latest site of the week belongs to a German state guild association based in Bavaria, Metzgerhandwerk Bayern. In their own words they are "the contact point for the butcher trade".

The website of Metzgerhandwerk Bayern is a recent addition to our sites directory, and was created by the agency whose own site was featured as our site of the week just last week — Kasper Communications GmbH. This site features a beautiful, clean design with various content blocks, strong colors, and loads of high quality photographs. Content is of equally high quality, and there's plenty of it here, including podcasts section, a shop, and an elaborate fantasy themed recruitment campaign "Butcher's Tale".

As for behind the scenes details, this site doesn't seem to use any of the well known, full-blown front-end frameworks out there, but rather a hand-crafted setup. On the JavaScript side the site includes the slick carousel library, PhotoSwipe gallery plugin, and a few other third party dependencies. Only third party ProcessWire module we could spot here was Padloper, powering the web shop.

Big thanks to the folks at Kasper Communications for sharing this project with us, and our congratulations to the client, Metzgerhandwerk Bayern, for their stunning new ProcessWire powered website!

Stay tuned for our next issue

That's all for the 432nd issue of ProcessWire Weekly. We'll be back with more news, updates, and content Saturday, 26th of August. 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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