ProcessWire Weekly #516

Latest core updates: ProcessWire 3.0.237

This week we've got a brief weekly updates from Ryan, in which he announced the latest development version of ProcessWire, 3.0.227. This version has been in the works for a few weeks now, and we've covered much of it in our issues 511, 512, 514, and 515.

That being said, there have been some new additions this week as well. Here's a brief summary of what's new since last week:

• An update for the ProcessWire installer, making it work even if a site profile was already named site, instead of site-[profile name].
• An update for the core PageValues class to use $page->getField() to better support any descending classes, such as RepeaterMatrixPage.
• An update for the core admin theme styles, targeting align classes to a select set of expected HTML elements.
• An update for $pages->findOne(), adding support for the findAll flag, as well as the include=all selector option.

Additionally this version contains some fixes and smaller updates, such as:

• A fix for an issue where rotating an image in admin did not update the width and height values stored in the database.
• A fix for an issue where empty values were removed in WireTextTools::populatePlaceholders() even if removeNullTags option was set to false when values were picked from Page object. Additionally a new option removeEmptyTags was added.
• A fix for an issue where, as of PHP 8, PDO might throw an exception ("no active transaction") if the transaction had been autocommitted earlier.
• A fix for an issue where permissions added during module install could have their descriptions stored incorrectly in multi-language setups.

That's all for our core updates section this week. For more details, be sure to also check out the latest weekly update from Ryan. Thanks!

New module: Tag Herder

Tag Herder is a new third party module created by Rich Lott / Artful Robot. This module, which was introduced along with the People & Planet website also created by Rich Lott, adds a new admin view for listing and managing tags added to pages. This view allows one to rename, trash, and replace tags.

Since ProcessWire doesn't have a built-in context of tags outside of templates or fields, in the context of this module tags are pages using the "tag" template, referenced in the "tags" field attached to applicable pages. This means that the module is opinionated by design, but also somewhat likely to work for quite a few sites right out of the box, since aforementioned naming is rather common.

As the projects README explains this module has not been tested on a massive amount of pages or tags, but should be good for at least a few hundred pages and a hundred or so tags.

If you'd like to give this module a try, you can clone or download the module's source code from the TagHerder repository at Codeberg. Big thanks to Rich Lott for creating this project and sharing it with us!

Site of the week: People & Planet

Our latest site of the week belongs to People & Planet, which is an UK based grassroots student network campaigning against oppression and injustice. They cover most UK universities, and their work involves campaigning and training people to work towards improvements in university, corporate, government, and international policies.

Our mission is to build an empowered generation of change-makers who are equipped with life-long skills, motivation and networks to be a force for change in achieving a more equitable and sustainable world.

— People & Planet

The People & Planet website was created by Rich Lott / Artful Robot. In addition to providing a whole lot of information about the organization and ongoing campaigns, this site has a very nice, colorful and interesting design, as well as a set of useful alternative view modes — or "hacks", as they are called on the site — for anyone who might benefit from a slightly different web experience: alternative font for dyslexics, high contrast mode, and a campaigners mode for those already familiar with the general concept and just looking for the latest news, petitions, etc. from active campaigns.

As for behind the scenes details, there's plenty of detail about this project at the showcase forum thread for the People & Planet website, which in turn is based on a blog post labeled "ProcessWire is my new Drupal". As the creator of the site explains in his post, after Drupal 7 they were looking for a new platform, and landed on ProcessWire for both his and his clients' benefit. As for the People & Planet, some key tools and concepts behind it include core Page classes, Latte templating engine, and the PageTableNext module.

For more details and thoughts about the process of working with ProcessWire, be sure to check out the showcase forum thread mentioned. Big thanks to Rich Lott / Artful Robot for sharing this project with us and congratulations to People & Planet for their new website, as well as best wishes in any of their future endeavours!

Stay tuned for our next issue

That's it for the 516th issue of ProcessWire Weekly. We'll be back with more news, updates, and content Saturday, 6th 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!