ProcessWire Weekly #463

Latest core updates and a weekly update from Ryan

In the latest weekly update from Ryan at the support forum Ryan talks a bit about this week's core updates — which are mostly minor bugfixes, so nothing particularly major in there — before introducing the latest addition to the ProDevTools module bundle: Wire Request Blocker.

As for near future core updates, one particularly interesting highlight from the weekly update is that the TinyMCE Inputfield module will likely be merged to the core by next week. That's definitely something to look forward to, and in many ways a major update over current CKEditor rich text editor field.

Sneak peek into the Wire Request Blocker module

The request blocker was built to prevent scanners and bots from consuming too much of the server's resources by automatically blocking their IPs when specific patterns are detected. Essentially Wire Request Blocker is a type of web application firewall: it keeps track of "bad" requests from clients, and when a specific number is reached, said client gets blocked from accessing your site for a set amount of time.

Once blocked, a request from the client won't even reach ProcessWire, instead getting cut off at web server — assuming that you have recommended .htaccess configuration in place, which is not necessary, but obviously a good thing for both performance and security. After all you don't want bad actors to get anywhere near your site.

You can find more details about this module from the ProcessWire Request Blocker docs page at the ProcessWire store. In case you're a ProDevTools user, the module is available via the support forum area, so feel free to give it a try right away.

That's all for our weekly core updates section. As always, be sure to check out the weekly update post from Ryan for additional details and stay tuned for more core updates next week. 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.

• It seems that lately AI related news have been absolutely everywhere, and the ProcessWire community is no different — in fact there's now a Process module that interacts directly with the ChatGPT API, and users have experimented with creating all-new modules with the help of ChatGPT. Definitely interesting to see what sort of achievements this technology will bring next!
• Next up we've got some great news: ProcessWire Recipes now has a new home at processwire.recipes. It's also super easy to keep track of the project by following the changelog page at processwire.recipes — and while you're at it, go give the processwire-recipes GitHub repository a star to show your support.
• For those interested in the RockMigrations module and programmatic migrations as a wider topic, there's a new post from Bernhard Baumrock — the developer of said module — about how the RockMigrations module works and why it handles certain things unlikely some competing solutions. An interesting read for sure.
• Next up we've got a very interesting case story for a ProcessWire powered project, in the form of a scientific study. The paper, authored by researchers from Spanish universities of Sevilla and Castilla-La Mancha, is from 2018 and provides a decent dive into the specifics of a ProcessWire powered online geospatial database.
• Finally, just a quick highlight: did you know that the official website of Oktoberfest is powered by ProcessWire? Not that it would be a surprise that ProcessWire could power the site of such a major event, but that's still pretty awesome!

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: Hartford Truck Equipment

Hartford Truck Equipment is a family owned and operated company based in South Windsor, Connecticut. They are also one of New England's leading truck equipment distributors, and we're very happy to have their new ProcessWire powered website featured as our latest site of the week.

The website of Hartford Truck Equipment is split into contacts section, about section, a products area, and a login-only section for authorized dealers. All in all there's quite a lot of information about the company and their offering on this site, complete with a virtual tour of their offices, and of course instructions for how to find and reach them. Design wise this site has a very nice industrial vibe to it, and there are some details — such as the menu dump truck animation — that add a bit of extra spice to the mix.

As for behind the scenes details, the front-end of this site appears to be largely custom built, and makes use of a shard grid framework from the developers of the site, Solution Innovators. Some of the ProcessWire modules that we could spot on this site include two very popular, commercial add-ons from Ryan — ProCache and Form Builder.

Our congratulations to Hartford Truck Equipment for their new, ProcessWire powered site, and big thanks to the folks at Solution Innovators for sharing this project with us. Great job from the team behind this project!

Stay tuned for our next issue

That's all for the 463rd issue of ProcessWire Weekly. We'll be back with more news, updates, and content Saturday, 1st 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!