In the 524th issue of ProcessWire Weekly we'll check out what's new in the core this week, introduce a new module called SEO Text Width, and more. Read on!
Welcome to the latest issue of ProcessWire Weekly! In this week's issue we'll check out what's new in the core this week, right before taking a quick look at one of the latest third party modules made available via the modules: SEO Text Width.
As always we've also got a new site of the week to introduce, and this week that site, created by Jens Weigel, belongs to the German company Giersbach — the pioneer in the recycling of thermal plastics.
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: new Inputfield header action features and more!
As outlined by Ryan in his latest weekly update, this week we've got some very interesting new core updates to cover. Two of said updates — and the ones that users are most likely to knowingly run into — are focused on extending the scope of the Inputfield actions feature, previously covered in issue #522 of ProcessWire Weekly:
- Inputfield header actions can now be added in PHP in addition to original JavaScript API. You can find more details by checking out the code for the Inputfield::addHeaderAction() method
- In addition to existing "click" and "toggle" action types, a third action type "link" is now also supported. This action type adds a link that opens the target location, optionally in a modal window.
Third feature addition this week involves two new $database API methods: reset() and close(). Out of these two reset() is likely to see more use, as it attempts to restore a lost database connection, while close() simply closes an existing connection. The core also uses reset() automatically if it detects a lost connection error while querying the database (up to a maximum number of attempts; by default 3).
In addition to the feature updates mentioned above, there have also been some smaller improvements to the core this week, including some improvements and optimizations for the admin profile page, improvements to the core demo mode, and minor fix for the lister feature.
That's all for our core updates section this week. For more details, be sure to also check out the weekly update by Ryan at the support forum. Thanks!
New module: SEO Text Width
SEO Text Width is a new third party module by Leftfield. Here's what this module does, as outlined in the elaborate explanation in the module's README:
This little gem of a module calculates text width exactly how Google's SERP (fancy talk for Search Engine Results Page) wants it. No more guessing games! We're also talking meta titles and descriptions, those make-or-break snippets that determine if someone clicks on your website or gets hypnotized by a cat video.
Essentially the module allows you to pick the fields that you are storing the title and the meta description for Google search results, and calculates (or estimates) the width of the text in said fields as it would be displayed in Google search results. The module can also warn you when you're likely over the limit, e.g. your text won't fit available space.
If you'd like to give this module a try, you can clone or download the source code from the SeoTextWidth GitHub repository, or install the module via the built-in modules manager in the admin. In case you require additional support or have feature suggestions, be sure to head down to the SEO Text Width support forum thread.
Big thanks to Leftfield for creating this module and sharing it with us. And congratulations for your first published module!
Site of the week: Giersbach
Our latest site of the week belongs to a German company specializing in recycling of thermal plastics — Giersbach. They have a long history (over 40 years according to the website) and a very important job to do, as recycling plastic material is undeniably a big deal when it comes to sustainability.
As for the Giersbach website, it was created alongside a new corporate identity for the company. With both parts handled by Jens Weigel, the end result is a tightly packed website with a clean, nice design and content made available in three languages: German, English, and Czech.
As for some behind the scenes details, the front-end of this website was created using a custom framework. In terms of CSS it seems quite modern too, making use of various relatively recent features, such as CSS variables and grid. As for third party ProcessWire modules, there are none visible on the front-end of the site, so there's not much else we can say about the implementation — apart from the fact that it works quite nicely.
Thanks to Jens Weigel for sharing this project with us, and our congratulations to the client, Giersbach, for their new, ProcessWire powered website!
Stay tuned for our next issue
That's it for the 524th issue of ProcessWire Weekly. We'll be back with more news, updates, and content Saturday, 1st of June. 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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