ProcessWire Weekly #52

ProcessWire 2.6 is here!

After seven months of development and huge amounts of feedback, contributions, and support from the community, ProcessWire 2.6 is finally here.

A total of 30 dev branch releases has resulted in quite a list of improvements and additions. Just to mention a few highlights, this release introduces a new notifications system, options fieldtype, icons inputfield, FileValidator module type, great improvements for the built-in RTE tools, GUI for viewing logs.. and so much more!

Check out Ryan's release announcement for a summary of improvements. Ryan also goes into more detail about some of our short-term plans, answers the question of "should I start using 2.6 right away" (yes!) and introduces a new security-related documentation section.

Huge thanks to everyone involved in the making of 2.6

By participating at the ProcessWire support forum, posting issues and pull requests via GitHub, and using and testing the dev branch, the community has been a tremendous asset for our efforts, and we hope you'll all continue to support ProcessWire.

You've made this release – and our continuing growth – possible in the first place!

Additional special thanks go to our sponsors – Avoine, Stardesign, and Update AG – and everyone interested in the commercial Pro modules. These are the things that allow our lead developer, Ryan Cramer, to spend more time working with ProcessWire.

Module authors ahoy!

In other news, a brief message for module authors: the modules directory now lets you choose 2.6 as a "compatible with" version. It would be helpful if you could give your module(s) a try on 2.6 and update the compatibility status if everything went smooth. Thanks in advance!

While it's unlikely that a module compatible with 2.5 wouldn't be compatible with 2.6, it's always better be sure. This is also a good time to revisit your modules if there's anything you've been wanting to add or improve.

New module: Activity Log by Tom Reno

Activity Log is a brand new module built by Tom Reno. In a nutshell this module logs page changes and outputs a detailed list of what was changed, by whom, and when the change was made – and, of course, visualises those changes in an easy-to-understand way by adding a new Activity Log tab to Page Edit.

In addition to a list of the changes, you can actually view old and new content for various fields, including textarea fields, for which the viewer will open in a new modal window. The whole UI of the module has the simplicity and looks one would expect from the author of the admin theme Reno, one of the two admin themes ProcessWire natively ships with.

Additionally the module contains a built-in render feature, which allows you to output activity log for given page at template level – a very handy feature for intranets, extranets, and all sorts of custom sites and applications requiring non-admin-viewable change tracking.

For more details about this module, please visit the support forum thread. Thanks to Tom for building this awesome module – we're sure that it'll come in handy on a multitude of occasions, and we're glad to have it in the ProcessWire modules directory!

Weekly ProcessWire online resources

This is our weekly take on some of the most interesting recent ProcessWire resources. Though we do try to keep the list current and include the resources brought up in the forums and other places, please let us know if there's anything else you can think of that should be here!

• First of all, there's a new documentation section available that discusses a very important topic: security. With topics ranging from basic file permissions to third party modules and much more, this is the must-read resource of the week!
• Mainly a curiosity for most ProcessWire users out there, but here's a new commercial ProcessWire product from Norway: a digital signage product called ProcessDisplay.
• There's a new video tutorial at YouTube for installing ProcessWire under cPanel with the Softaculous installer. The video goes through everything from installation to setting up backups in less than two minutes – that's one streamlined process right there!
• Just something we've been playing with recently: client-side image resizing. This looks like a very promising concept, and perhaps something that ProcessWire could benefit from in the near future too.
• If you're wondering if ProcessWire can scale up to your needs, check out this post: 1.2 million pages and still running like a charm. How many products out there are known to run sites like that without even breaking a sweat?

If you're interested in real-time ProcessWire news, discussions, and updates, there are always interesting discussions going on at the support forum. Since we're only able to include a tiny selection of those in our weekly updates, head down to the forums for a lot more!

Site of the week: 25 Jahre Deichtorhallen

This time our site of the week, 25 Jahre Deichtorhallen, is a showcase of various exhibitions taking place in the Deichtorhallen in Hamburg, Germany over the past 25 years. The site is only available in German, but thanks to Google Translate doing a decent job, we were able to delve into the rather interesting stories on the site.

The bulk of the site is structured as a collection of slideshows. Each collection represents a year, and each slide is a photo from said year, with a caption describing who or what it is that you're currently looking at.

With nothing but a few minimal navigation elements on top of the photographs, this is one of those cases where words alone won't do this site justice – much like the exhibitions it's built to showcase, it has to be experienced. Not only does one get to see glimpses of the exhibitions – a treat in itself – but there's also the fun aspect of seeing how the visitors and even photography have changed from 1989 to 2014.

This site was authored by Nico Knoll, just like our previous site of the week. Congratulations to Nico for a job well done; you've deserved your place in the (imaginary) ProcessWire hall of fame, and we're eagerly waiting to see what great projects you'll unveil in the future!

Stay tuned for our next issue

That's it for the 52nd issue of ProcessWire Weekly. We'll be back with more news, updates, and content next Saturday, 16th of May. 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!