Leaderboard

I hope that you all had a great Christmas holiday (or other holiday that was last week). And likewise hope that you have a Happy New Year this upcoming week. This week we'll take a quick look at last week's new master version launch and then discuss the status of the new ProcesssWire.com website currently in development: https://processwire.com/blog/posts/rebuilding-the-pw-site-5/

A few more CMS marketing pages that I thought were effective... https://www.silverstripe.org/ - I see SilverStripe as being quite similar to PW in terms of target market (or what I think the PW target market should be). If I wasn't in love with PW I'd probably be using SilverStripe, partly because of the New Zealand connection. https://dotcms.com/ - good use of a video https://prismic.io/ - simple with plenty of whitespace https://ghost.org/features/ - their Home page is weak but I like this Features page https://craftcms.com/ - the focus on custom design and development ("design and build exactly what you need") is similar to what we should do with processwire.com

Just read "headless" on their site and thought this would be an important keyword for processwire.com as well. Maybe something like: I'm neither a native speaker nor a marketing slogan guru, but I hope you get what I'm trying to say. And as a proof, this statement could be linked to this video as discussed here: While I love that video content and know how true every word in it is, I think for new users this might not be obvious. Quite on the contrary, I think a video with one stranger telling something about a great system that he developed in his living room (sorry ? ) does not have the professional impression that it deserves. Also 33k views since 2010 is really not a lot - all of us know that these are no fair indicators for the power or greatness of processwire, but new users might not get that. I think it would be great to have a 2minute introduction video in a modern and professional design. I even think that it would be great to let this video have 100% the same text of the first 2min of the ancient video from 2010 to show how revolutionary the platform was back then (all modern CMSs sell that as the new big thing) while on the other hand PW has it for 10 years and has been stable all the time! Maybe someone could help with such a video? @heldercervantes or @Jonathan Lahijani ? One more thing that I like on modern websites about products is a section where the product is compared to other players in the market. Like runcloud does it on their website: Here is how such a page looks like: I think such pages could make a LOT of sense because people already know DroomlaPress and such a comparison page could outline the differences and show the strengsths of processwire in a fair and efficient way. If you try to compare it via google/youtube searches processwire will always lose the game because it's just not focussed on marketing the way the other platforms are. But that could easily be outlined on such pages, e.g. comparing CMS XY to PW: Good luck with the new processwire.com and happy and successful new year to everybody ?

To use it locally it's simple. Download and install Mathjax lib Download Mathjax from Github and extract the following file and folders from the downloaded archive into the CKEditor Mathjax plugin dir : Left panel = CKEditor mathjax plugin dir / Right panel = Mathjax downloaded folder Modify your config.js (or config-body.js) before : config.mathJaxLib = '//cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/mathjax/2.7.4/MathJax.js?config=TeX-AMS_HTML'; after : config.mathJaxLib = ProcessWire.config.urls.root + 'site/modules/InputfieldCKEditor/plugins/mathjax/MathJax.js?config=TeX-AMS_CHTML'; Note : on the config line, the config get value (?config=TeX-AMS_CHTML) need to be the name of one config file existing under the mathjax/config dir. Refresh your page and voila.

Exciting that the new processwire.com could arrive within the next week! Caught me by surprise too, as I thought it was early days yet for the design and that there would be more evaluation/discussion/iteration of it before it went out live to the world. But I can appreciate also that a "move fast and break things" approach is often the most productive. A couple of observations/opinions of previous screenshots (I didn't comment earlier because I thought it might have been too early for this sort of thing)... I'm not liking the typeface used in the new design. My main gripe is the curved strokes used on characters such as A, V, w, etc. This design detail looks ugly and amateurish to my eye. I know it's a small detail and such things can be a matter of taste but in support of my opinion I'll add that if you look at the work of the top-tier type foundries such as Hoefler or Klim you won't find any typefaces that curve the strokes on these characters. I also think the x-height is excessively large (the height of the lowercase relative to the uppercase). Again it's a subtle thing but I'd argue this sways the balance too far towards "friendly" versus "serious". My preference would be for something more neutral and serious as the main typeface. As an example, Molde is very affordable at the moment and a great workhorse due to the many included weights and widths. Another observation is that the pages that have the entire page background in blue are pretty intense. It's too strong IMO and not so comfortable or inviting for reading. And when it comes to the Showcase the focus should be on the site screenshots - the page design should aim to show them off as best as possible. A strongly saturated background distracts from and can clash with the content in the screenshots. I think the blue background works better in smaller blocks on the page, to highlight a section or provide differentiation between sections on the page. When it comes to large background areas I think white or greys would be better (this could include dark greys or black if we want some blocks to have reversed type). The other thing that I think it would be good to discuss is who the target user of ProcessWire is. I'd love to hear @ryan's view on this, as well as other community members' views. Of course many different types of user could find value in PW, but when it comes to designing and evaluating marketing materials such as processwire.com I think it can be helpful to form a clear picture of a specific target user. We can't have "everyone who wants to make a website" as a target - so who is the user that will find most value in PW, who is that user we want to draw in? I discovered this older topic recently that has some interesting discussion about promoting ProcessWire as an "enterprise CMS". I'm not saying that "enterprise" is what we want to focus on as a primary target market (I don't think it is), but I do think that we need to have more of these kinds of discussions with the aim of clarifying who ProcessWire is targeted to and how best to reach that audience. My view is that the PW's biggest asset is its powerful and well-documented API. And the user who is most able to benefit from that is a user who has a fair amount of development experience. It's probably a user who is a professional developer in one form or another. It's hard to get a sense of the breakdown of types of users currently working with PW - the forum is one of the few ways but it's not a good guide because there could be many experienced developers using PW who don't need help via the forums and are perhaps too busy to make other contributions there. But generally I get the sense that PW is not reaching experienced professional developers as well as it could. Part of reaching and capturing the target audience involves making sure processwire.com communicates to that audience that you've come to the right place. The cues for this can be subtle. I think the visual and written language of processwire.com should be serious, neutral (PW is "unopinionated"), and prepared with the professional developer in mind. The API should be emphasised and we should be careful to avoid any "dumbing down" that might obscure the fact that PW is a powerful and sophisticated tool. I'm not saying that the proposed design or the existing processwire.com are failing in this regard - just that I think these things should be key considerations.

Thanks for the detailed reply Ryan. That's a good point. We'll have a much clearer impression of the new site when we can see it rendered in our browsers. This is a very broad audience. When the market for a product is large (e.g. the car market), usually some market segmentation goes on so that you don't have every provider trying to reach the entirety of the audience. So instead of targeting all car buyers in the broadest way ("It has four wheels!", "It can transport you from A to B!") manufacturers tailor the product and its marketing towards the interests of a narrower group within the audience ("Lowest particulate emissions of any mid-size van!", "Traverse any terrain with huge 283mm ground clearance!"). But having said that and having now looked at the marketing of many CMS products it seems that few providers in the CMS space aim for a narrower market segment. This surprises me because there are many... Different kinds of web-delivered content (single landing page, small brochure site, huge corporate documents database, Ajax-driven SPA, the list is endless) Different levels of custom development (from off-the-shelf WP themes to fully custom design and coding) Different divisions of responsibility between client and professional (client cannot design anything and strictly manages content only versus client virtually designs the site themselves via the backend) Different preferences for templating (via templating language such as Twig versus pure PHP) Different levels of coding competency (experienced developer proficient in many programming languages versus newbie, or person who thinks website equals Squarespace - which is not a rare thing given the saturation marketing of that provider) Different relationships with the finished website (this is my own website and I enjoy tinkering with it, versus I am a professional and I need to get the job done because time is money, etc) I could go on... Maybe we don't want to narrow down our audience much, but I think we should at least be mindful of people who PW is not going to suit: People who want an off-the-shelf theme already integrated with a CMS product (we have few available themes/profiles I can't see PW seriously competing in this space). People who have little to no PHP experience. So I think there should be strong emphasis on the suitability of PW for custom design and development. And there should be some code shown on the PW home page ? (if that scares away anyone then PW was never going to be a good fit for them). The best CMS home page I came across in my search is for Wagtail: https://wagtail.io/ Not saying its styling is perfect (for one thing I'd say go for a fixed max-width rather than a fully fluid layout) but I like several aspects of it: Many short, punchy value statements It's a fairly long home page that highlights many aspects of the CMS but is not excessively wordy I really like the tabbed interface showing off the top four features It doesn't shy away from showing some code front-and-centre It speaks to different audience segments in the "You'll all love it" section

Hi, Choose / install a newer PHP version in cPanel. Your current version look too old (below 5.4) and do not support short array syntax..

Plus, if you hang fire a bit, we can launch the forums and dev directory and other sections using the new styling all at once rather than a bit at a time. It actually bugs me when other sites don't do this as you're getting new visitors all the time so, whilst it's only a visual mismatch, it can be jarring and look a little disorganised/unprofessional if people don't realise what's happening behind the scenes and it may be that they go elsewhere as a result.

I agree with Jens on the "are you a..." split on the homepage (think I've mentioned it to you before Ryan once or twice ;)). If there's going to be a screenshot on the homepage then I think it needs to be below that section really, a bit like Activecollab and others show their main features here before leading into the screenshot - because the main selling points wouldn't immediately obvious from the screenshot itself: https://activecollab.com/ https://www.kayako.com/ and some CMS' don't even have a screenshot on their homepage: https://modx.com/ https://umbraco.com (.NET, but popular in that language) https://www.drupal.org/ https://www.joomla.org/ Wordpress do have a screenshot on wordpress.org, but only to show that you can install a blog with a theme in seconds (their strong point of course). I pretty much agree with everything Jens has said so far, especially this post: I also don't like the heading font, sorry! It seems like a small thing but ProcessWire is a professional system built for professionals, so somehow to me the playful curves on the heading font seems to detract from that for me. But since you're asking for everyone's opinion you're always going to get a split of "that looks fine" and "I don't like that" ? Another thought - is it actually wise to launch the new website just to get it out by a self-imposed deadline? I'm thinking in case there's something in the navigation structure that may change, but equally if any pages get their content majorly shuffled around due to feedback it's probably not wise to change them multiple times on a live site in quick succession. I've made suggestions for changes to the top-nav over the years that I think make sense and I'm worried that - without seeing the new structure - others may also have suggestions that could be adopted and changing the navigation structure more than once in a short space of time is obviously not great for SEO (if that were to happen - there's a lot of "what ifs" until we can see it of course ?). Putting it up somewhere behind a simple password screen where search engines won't immediately gobble up the content and getting feedback makes more sense to me, though I realise that getting feedback from so many people before launch could drag out the process quite a lot. Maybe give us somewhere to look at it before launch, see who's interested in helping out and get a small group together to help with the final touches? That way you get the best of both worlds, launch with any ideas you want to implement but then the small group collates and curates the feedback so it doesn't add too much time into the process.

I'd start by reading about $cache. Try the examples at this link that I posted above especially under Cache PageArray objects. You would want the cache refreshed every time a quote page is created/edited. Secondly, do you really need repeaters for your quotes? You could store each quote as a page under one parent. Finally, without knowing a bit more about your template and page structure, it is hard to give more specific advice.

Thank you! Is working just perfectly! ?

I don't think I found any problems with it, but I have also been using: strpos($_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'], $this->wire('config')->urls->admin) === 0

I wouldn't recommend a gif (img quality, file size, maintainability etc) but rather a slider with separate images.

Small update to the "New Since" section this morning. It now automatically generates a full API data cache before any PW core system updates so there is no longer a need to have the API Explorer panel open before changing the core version. I also fixed a bug generating this when in the PW admin - it was working fine on the frontend of a site, but not the backend.

that's great to hear – you may be one of the only sites on the internet using the Cassette UI..

I think you should outline the fact that we have a friendly, warm and helpful community, which often responds to questions asked in minutes or hours. And the tone of conversations is very nice. This is ONE thing that I love about ProcessWire. Target groups You are writing, that there is a second target group "actual clients that hire web developers". So I think we need a separate landing page for this target group. The solution could be to present a chooser "Are you a developer/designer?" or "Are you a business owner, CEO... etc/ Are you looking for help?" on the main page which scrolls down on the main page if the first option is selected (because thats the main target group), and leads to another page if the second option was selected. Devs For devs please outline the use as a CMF. I developed two business applications with PW as a CMF, while using the existing backend, and customized it, to my likings. CEOs On the page for business owners there should be sections for getting support and the main selling points of ProcessWire, maybe even advantages over WordPress. Linking to blog post like my own "Why ProcessWire is the best choice for your website (not always, but in most cases)" could be helpful. Looking for a web developer to aid you? We have a list of devs available. Is this and that possible with ProcessWire? Most time the answer is "YES", but if you are curious: Go ahead and ask in the forums. Here the warm and helpful community should also be outlined. Backend showcase I think that ONE screenshot can not resemble ProcessWires backend accurate enough. Multiple sections that describe the main aspects are needed. Also I think that we need different screenshots or maybe even screencasts of the admin/backend for different target groups, because different aspects of the admin are important for these groups. What is important for developers? Everything is a custom field and custom fields can be easily added Dependency fields (showIf) Repeaters Backend is customizable (custom template input masks) Can even be replaced with an own backend Powerfull debugging tool (Tracy debugger, even if its not part of the core, maybe think about integrating it?) What is important for CEOs, marketers? Easy and intuitive backend Fast Access level control Security Customizable Designs SEO friendly Extendable Performance Thats all for now, but maybe I extend this post later, or do another one.

Glad you like it ? While I like your thinking here, I think it might actually be a better fit inside Ryan's API Explorer Pro module. My understanding is that he uses that to build the documentation on the website as well as being a module that users can install on their systems. I think because of the way I have written this for Tracy, working off an array of classes/methods/properties cached from the last version, I don't think I have much of a leg up towards what you are suggesting. I definitely think it's a good idea though and maybe worth a suggestion to Ryan here: https://github.com/processwire/processwire-issues/issues/759 Perhaps someone out there with Ryan's module might like to tackle adding this functionality?

Thanks for all the quotes Horst, Margie and Jmartsch! I have added these into the site. Thank you for all of your feedback and excellent comments/questions. I'm glad you are interested in this, as I love to type about it. ?These are all very subjective things. I've tried to focus on making myself happy with it first. I don't expect everyone to like the same things, as we are all a product of our conditioning, especially as it relates to likes and dislikes of colors, fonts, etc. Even more-so with a global audience. Since I've done the build out this time around, the result is currently consistent with my own conditioned preferences, trying to put my best effort towards that. That's where I have to start. But it won't stay that way and I fully expect design elements (like those you've outlined) to evolve. But because it's all subjective, unless something immediately makes sense to my own understanding, I've got to focus on broad consensus more than individual opinions. That's in part why I want to go ahead and get it online, because it's going to be a lot easier to communicate and collaborate. You are picking things out of the few screenshots I've posted (which is all that can be done right now), but these are just basically thumbnails that lack context. So it's feedback about screenshots rather than an actual site, and I'd like to get to the actual site. The site and the screenshots really aren't the same thing, and the screenshots have a whole different feel than the actual site (for better or worse). For instance, once online, if you think you've found a more suitable typeface, you'll be able to use your browser tools to inspect and change it, take a screenshot and post it, and if it seems pretty unanimous then we'll change it. Other things might take more than just browser tools so I'm also hoping to get it into a site profile. There are other reasons I want to go ahead and get it online. First off, I love the current site, but I also think that for people new to ProcessWire, the current site is starting to look old. I'd become so used to it that I didn't notice until recently. For someone clicking around visiting the sites of the various different CMSs, they likely comparing it to the other CMS sites, all of which look quite a bit newer than ours (I've been visiting them all). We have a great site, but it's a 5-year old site, and I think new visitors see that. I'm guilty of this— I evaluate some product/project/tool or another and don't give a second look to the those that don't subjectively appeal to me with their site. I don't have to love the design aspects of it, but I do have to be convinced that there is quality and that someone cares today, not just yesterday. It has to look relatively new or I just assume the project isn't active, or isn't going to be worthwhile, despite any other factors. Regardless of actual design, that first filter is: "does this look up to date and like someone cares?", because if it doesn't then I'm probably not going to look closer at the product/project. This is of course not very smart, but I've just noticed that's the way my mind seems to work. I'm thinking it might also be the way a lot of us work. So when it comes to the ProcessWire site, my feeling is, the sooner we can get something online that is newer than what's there now (and still accomplishes everything content-wise), the better. I appreciate your perspective and these are good points. Though this is one area where I feel differently. I like what this particular typeface communicates and the way that it does it, though maybe there are others that can do the same. But let me explain. It's precisely those details that draw me to it, because it's just ever so slightly organic. While not apparent at regular body copy sizes, it is in headlines in a few of the letters. It steps outside the expected boundaries every once in awhile, which to me feels like breath of fresh air. Like I hope people perceive PW relative to the others. That little detail of slightly curved strokes on a few of the uppercase letters, when noticed, feels a little like warmth, like the friendliness of ProcessWire, and by that I mean that ProcessWire is more than software, it's community. Anyone can say they are friendly, but ProcessWire actually is. I think it also says something about ProcessWire's API in that it's quality and clear, but it's not just work, it's also something you will enjoy. It's professional first, but there's that slightly warm and organic craftsmanship aspect that goes beyond the hard edges of the cold machine. Lastly, purely side effect, but I do like that some of the strokes slightly curve in an almost wire-like fashion, giving a feel of flexibility over rigidity, which I think is also ProcessWire. But it's primarily the professional while warm aspect that appeals to me. There are all the things I like at least. Maybe there are other typefaces that can do it even better, but I've not found anything that does it quite as well so far. It'd be simpler to accomplish this all with a serif face, but I want the modernity of sans serif without the machine-like coldness, and feel like I found it. I look forward to seeing some other options too, I'm sure they are out there even if I haven't found them. I looked at Molde, and it's attractive but cold, kind of geometric and anonymous, and it's hard not to think of Helvetica, despite there likely being lots of subtle differences. It seems like its strength is in its variations. The condensed version feels like it's starting to relate to PW, except that... it's condensed. ? You might be right, but I think this is one where you'll have to see it in context first, rather than screenshots. I'm well aware that dark text on light background is considered the standard for legibility. So anything that involves paragraphs of text is always on a white background in this site. For pages where the primary emphasis is headlines, links, tiny snippets or copy or images, I'm going with the blue background (which is the same blue that is currently in use on this site). You mentioned intensity but I see calm (maybe it's screen related). Though the intention wasn't really either. It was instead just to have more depth where the content would allow, to show that ProcessWire is not a theme engine and there's a lot of inherent flexibility in how you output content. I wanted to get well beyond the 1-template appearance by having a strong contrast in presentation. To my eyes, it's just as legible as the pages with white backgrounds (and actually, I prefer it for reading, but my eyes have bad floaters so light backgrounds are difficult). But it might be one of those colors that looks great on one screen and not another, so we'll have to see if there's consensus and perhaps fine tune it further. This is an easy answer. The primary audience for the website is web developers (or web designer/developers). The secondary audience is the actual clients that hire web developers, whether that be owners, marketing people, designers, etc. So from a marketing aspect, the purpose of the site is first to get the web developers on board, and second to tell the clients that: not only are they going to love the system, but that it's an exceptionally secure, reliable, safe and really easy-to-use system that will put them a step ahead of their peers. I feel like our old/current homepage only speaks a little bit to these groups and that it's too general and abstract in wording. The new homepage is quite a bit more specific about these two groups. I just need to figure out that darn iMac screenshot, as ProcessWire isn't some tangible thing/object that you show. But I just need a screenshot to show that is compelling enough to capture your eye and make you want to start reading what's on the rest of the page. I have not yet figured out how to show this in a screenshot. ProcessWire is definitely an enterprise tool, but I'm not really interested in spending energy targeting this "enterprise" segment. Several CMS seem to target this, lose the interest of everyone else, and meanwhile the enterprise segment goes off and mostly uses WordPress. ? To a large extent, the enterprise segment listens to their web agencies or in house web designers and developers. I feel that if you are attracting the web design/development community, then you are also attracting the enterprise segment better than you can do directly. The types of users currently working with PW are almost exclusively web developers, and related web design/development agencies. This much is pretty clear. I completely agree that PW is not reaching this audience as well as it could. This really is a primary motivation for rebuilding the site. Also completely agree. And they have come to the right place, but few realize it. That's the challenge to solve. I feel like the new homepage gets quite a bit closer to communicating this, but also think really nailing it perfectly is going to take getting a professional designer involved before it's a home run. However, I think next week when it launches, it'll be a step closer to where it needs to be. Some good momentum to get things going to the next steps hopefully. I largely agree with everything here. I've spent a lot of time writing copy this last week and this sounds consistent with what I've been after. Though I don't think marketing can really be unopinionated per se, because the purpose is to get you to buy into something. For instance, I might say that ProcessWire has the best API, and I really believe it, but such a statement can only ever be an opinion.

That could work too, although once it's filled you cannot know for sure which format it uses (eg consider 12-12-2018 or 12/12/12), only if you clear the field.

I've created a new documentation page with docsify. I was about to ship standalone markdown files with the module so they could be versioned and read through GitHub (or somehow else). Then I looked at @adrian's docs for Tracy and I liked it, especially the search feature, so I decided to go that route. The next release will contain a major rewrite for filters and macros. They contribute largely to the module's robustness (imo) and I wanted these functions to be available separately too. So there's a new "PWHelpers" class (name is not final) that contains methods that filters and macros are using. This means you can include this class in your non-latte PW projects too and use them if you wish. Another motivation was to make these functions testable which was not possible without this change. I wrote tests for almost every filter and macro. I spent significant time to it (testing is fun :)) and have fixed many bugs. Of course this doesn't mean they are bug-free but they are much safer to use and when a new feature is added I can easily check if everything works as expected (using ProcessNetteTester btw). I was thinking about making this class a separate module but I kept it inside TemplateLatteReplace for now, but I can change this later if there's a need.

This is now available:

Happy holidays everyone! Here's a little present for the new year ? The API Explorer, Console, and File Editor panels now have access to the PW API data via a cache, rather than generating on-the-fly so those panels are now all much quicker after the first load after a core or module version update/install. This also means that we can now provide a "New Since" section in the API Explorer panel, which I first suggested over here. This shows you all the additions to the API compared with the previous installed version. In the screenshot you can see what's new since 3.0.117. If you want to get details about the changes from earlier versions, use the Process Version panel to change back to an old version (to build the cache of the old version), and then change back to the newer one. The Console and File Editor panels only cache the variables sections, so the list would be incomplete if you only had those loaded. I just ran this on the old PW master (3.0.98) and then switched to the current master (3.0.123) and this is what was returned - quite the changelog! A lot of refactoring went into this so that I could cache the API data in a way that I could compare so please let me know if you notice any problems.

(taken from https://processwire.com/talk/topic/7494-case-study-the-triumph-of-national-geographic-traveller-india-in-processwire/) More can be seen here: https://www.fixmy.pw/blog/why-we-love-processwire-cms-so-much-especially-after-working-with-crappy-joomla-wordpress-and-drupal-cmss/, starting at "For Developers, it's a welcome dream." ?

Nice, thanks. Another option could be to append the format hint to the field label in parentheses to avoid messing with the notes (not to overwrite any existing).

Have a look also to the section on Sub-selectors in that doc. So this should do it: $matches = $pages->find("template=group, children=[my_int_field=0]"); And for the other case: $groups = $pages->find("template=task,parent=[closed=0]");

Just to add to this thread - I needed the check to run during init() and the best option I could think of was: if( wire("process") != 'ProcessPageView' ) { //in the admin } Can anyone think of any situation where this would fail? Perhaps some modules may run ProcessPageView in the admin? Maybe Nico's check for the admin path in the URL is a better option. Anyone have any more recent thoughts on this?