In the 511th issue of ProcessWire Weekly we'll cover the latest core updates, introduce a new third party module called Auto AVIF, and more. Read on!
Welcome to the latest issue of ProcessWire Weekly. In this week's issue we're going to check out the latest core updates, available via the dev branch at GitHub, right before introducing yet another new module created by Robin Sallis: Auto AVIF.
As always we've also got a new site of the week to check out, and this week that is the very unique and interesting blog created for a Swiss movie currently in preproduction, Project Solanum. More about that in just a bit, so keep on reading.
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
In his latest weekly update, Ryan mostly talks about one specific feature addition made to the core this week: the ability to hide images from the output without removing them from the system. Potential use cases for this feature include hiding an image from a gallery or carousel, while still keeping it around and available for any future needs.
Files can also be hidden, but there's no GUI for that available yet. As Ryan explains the image part is likely to see more use, so it was a priority. That being said, files will likely get their own GUI at a later time — and it is already possible to hide them via the API: $file->hidden(true) to hide and $file->hidden(false) to show.
Other updates made to the core this week include a few smaller fixes, documentation updates, the added ability to remove WebP variations independently from regular (JPG, PNG) variations, and a little configuration update where module installs via file upload or URL are now disabled by default even when debug mode has been enabled.
That's all for our core updates section this week. For more details, be sure to check out the weekly update from Ryan at the support forum, and feel free to also dig into the weekly dev branch commit log at GitHub.
New module: Auto AVIF
Auto AVIF is a brand-new third party module created by Robin Sallis. What this module does is that it automatically generates AVIF files when new image variations are added. Essentially this module takes care of the process of creating new AVIF files and deleting them when a variation or original image is deleted.
The AVIF image format usually provides better compression efficiency than JPG or WebP formats, in many cases producing image files that are significantly smaller in size while also having fewer visible compression artifacts.
While the process of creating AVIF files with this module is straightforward, there are some considerations as well. One of these is that your server has to have support for AVIF, which is not the case for older setups; GD and PHP 8.1 or Imagick are required for this to work, at least. The module attempts to detect if everything looks good, though, so you should get an indication whether there is going to be a problem.
There are a few other gotchas as well, and you'll need to make a few adjustments to the .htaccess file of your site, but that is all covered in the detailed modules directory entry for the module, so be sure to check it out first. If you'd like to give this module a try, you can clone or download it via the Auto AVIF GitHub repository, or install it via the built-in modules manager in admin.
Big thanks to Robin for creating the Auto AVIF module and sharing it with us!
Site of the week: Project Solanum
Our latest site of the week is a blog created for Project Solanum, which is a Swiss movie currently in preproduction. Solanum is set in the future, year 2064, with one of its key topics being science, so it makes sense for the site to also be heavily inspired by scientific visualizations.
The Project Solanum website is a blog that documents the project, provides details about the world and background story, and also allows visitors of the site to contribute to the project. The user interface of the site is a unique, dynamic visualization powered by the D3.js JavaScript library, while ProcessWire provides the data and essentially acts as a headless CMS behind the scenes.
As for other behind the scenes details, there are a number of third party ProcessWire modules working their magic behind the scenes as well. Some of these include the AI translation tool Fluency, commercial Pro modules Form Builder and Repeater Matrix, Admin Restrict Branch, Fieldtype Oembed, Page Rename Options, and Markup Components. For more details be sure to check out the showcase thread for the site project, published via the ProcessWire support forum.
Thanks to the folks at EPRC for sharing this project with us. Our congratulations to the client, Project Solanum, for their new ProcessWire powered website. We'll definitely be keeping tabs on this movie project as it moves forward!
Stay tuned for our next issue
That's it for the 511th issue of ProcessWire Weekly. We'll be back with more news, updates, and content Saturday, 2nd 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!
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