ProcessWire Weekly #526

Weekly update from Ryan: releasing the Functional Fields module as open source in the modules directory

In his latest weekly update Ryan announces the availability of one of his modules, the Functional Fields, as a free, open source version. Previously commercially supported, according to Ryan this module hasn't required much support effort, so it was a good candidate for open-sourcing.

The Functional Fields module in a nutshell

Functional Fields is a fieldtype/Inputfield module combination, originally released way back in 2017. The blog post introducing the Functional Fields module covers the basics of the module, so be sure to check it out for more details, but in a nutshell this module can be used to define "fields" from within your template files, making any text snippet editable in the admin.

Functional fields are an entirely different way to define fields in ProcessWire, and they are really quite a convenient time saver for many cases. It's perfect for all of those text phrases and blocks you might be using in your template files that don't quite fit a traditional field. Things like postal addresses, copyright lines, phone numbers, action links like “Read More”, button text, disclaimers, table headings, alt tags for static images, and literally anything that you might use text for in your template files.

— Ryan

Using Functional Fields

Functional Fields are defined by using one of three functions provided by the module:

• __text('your text')
• __textarea('your text')
• __richtext('<p>your text</p>')`

In terms of code this could look something like this:

<button>
    <?= __text('Subscribe Now') ?>
</button>

There are a few other things worth knowing as well — such as naming snippets of text, accessing them using an alternative syntax, and defining labels — so be sure to check out the blog post for more information. Functional Fields is of course fully compatible with multi-lingual setups, in which case all defined fields become multi-lingual.

That's all for our core updates section for this week, but check out the weekly update from Ryan for more details, as well as the blog post mentioned above. Thanks!

New site profile: RockFrontend

RockFrontend Site Profile is a newly released site profile by Bernhard Baumrock, built to complement and accompany his RockFrontend module. RockFrontend Site Profile is, in a nutshell, a site profile that combines RockFrontend, the Uikit front-end framework, and the utility-first CSS framework Tailwind. The profile is, according to Bernhard, aimed for developers looking for robust UI components and extensive customization capabilities.

RockFrontend Site Profile is intended as a starting point for new sites, so it's relatively unopinionated, and mainly contains examples of how you might want to set up your site, and a few pre-installed modules that you will likely want to include:

• RockFrontend
• AdminStyleRock
• RockAdminTweaks
• TracyDebugger

• ProcessWireUpgrade

Technically both Uikit and Tailwind are optional, so you can remove either if that makes sense for your use case. Since the profile is based on RockFrontend, you can use Latte for your templates, you get live reload feature right out of the box, and so on — making this site profile quite a nice starting point for new projects.

If you'd like to give the RockFrontend Site Profile a try, you can clone or download the source code from the RockFrontend Site Profile GitHub repository, or you can grab the profile from the modules directory. If you need help getting started or have questions, head down to the RockFrontend Site Profile support forum thread.

Thanks to Bernhard for creating this site profile and sharing it with us!

Site of the week: The Finnish Coeliac Society

Our latest site of the week belongs to The Finnish Coeliac Society — Keliakialiitto in Finnish. They are an association with over 20.000 members, dedicated to enhancing the daily lives and well-being of Finnish individuals diagnosed with coeliac disease, as well as those adhering to a gluten-free diet for health reasons.

The Finnish Coeliac Society website contains a considerable amount of information, including general information about the coeliac disease and gluten-free products, a sizeable recipes section, latest news and articles, and an actively maintained events calendar. The main part of the site is intended for individuals, but there is also a section dedicated to nutrition and healthcare professionals, as well as product manufacturers and importers.

This site has been powered by ProcessWire for quite a while, but previous iteration of the site was getting somewhat dated, so the team at Avoine was tasked with designing and developing a new, more modern version. The goal was to bring in a whole new UI for both the front-end and the backend of the site, while keeping much of the content and certain features — such as the recipes section — mostly intact. Additionally the accessibility of the site was to be improved and audited.

The tech stack used on the front-end of this site include the Tailwind utility first front-end framework, JavaScript libraries Bartender and boring menu, and plenty of custom JavaScript and (S)CSS stuff. Behind the scenes some of the ProcessWire modules used include Wireframe, SearchEngine, Markup Menu, Markup Metadata, PrivacyWire, the must-have development tool Tracy Debugger, and various Pro module from Ryan — including ProCache, FormBuilder, and various ProFields.

Our congratulations to the team behind the project at Avoine, as well as the client, for breathing new life into this ProcessWire powered website!

Stay tuned for our next issue

That's it for the 526th issue of ProcessWire Weekly. We'll be back with more news, updates, and content Saturday, 15th 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!