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I figure this is an off topic board among friends here (like our pub, or a real one) and it’s okay to write with honesty and engage in spirited or sometimes heated conversation. So just want to be clear that I like and respect @MoritzLost and value his opinions, even if I don’t agree with all of them. We will all have a diversity of views and everyone should feel free to share them, and likewise others should feel free to question those or state their own, which is what I’m trying to do. But I’m glad MoritzLost shares his opinions here. Plus, a little controversy also helps to engage the community, and drags me out of the code for a bit, so I can’t fault anyone for that. Once I can state my thoughts, I carry no concerns, but thought I should defend the things that deserved defending, as I always should. As a caretaker of this project, part of my responsibility to add my honest point of view to a conversation like this, especially when something is posted where I don’t fully agree. I think many in our community know the subjectivity of statements here (whether OP’s, mine, or another’s), but an equal number may not, as this is a public board. So some counterpoint or back-and-forth is not only clarifying to the larger audience, but also useful, as we explore different facets of it all, and lead to the most important takeaways. I appreciate that MoritzLost continues to defend his point of view on parts, despite my own defense or heated questioning of those parts. It helps me to better understand and know which are the parts that he thinks are most important and deserve the attention. We obviously don’t have the resources to pursue everything Craft does, so narrowing in on the most important parts—the meat of it—is helpful here. I’m traveling right now so can’t participate as much as I’d like to at the moment but just didn’t want MoritzLost or anyone else to think I was angry or something. Likewise I didn’t want anyone else to think they had to moderate themselves either. When I’m among friends I feel comfortable to express and be honest, and so should you. If you get a heated reply from me it’s because I care about it and value your opinion. I’ll spend more time reading everything when I get back, but I can see already it’s a good and helpful discussion.

I realise that the original post here arose from the context of a comparison of Craft and PW. While it is sometimes helpful to look at other CMSs for inspiration, my fear is that, in this case it clouds the essential point: The 'lot of talk' refers to where, indeed, there was a lot of useful discussion of this topic but, unfortunately, not a lot of progress. As I suggested in that discussion: @MoritzLost's wishlist is definitely a contribution to such a collaborative development and I would agree with much of what is said. My chief concern is that it is very aspirational (and also reflective of personal preferences) such that: I think if the aspirations were more limited (at least initially), there might be a better chance of a result. Before reviewing the 'wish list', I would like to firstly consider the range of views then, finally, look at the current state and the way forward. Viewpoints Both @MoritzLost and I refer to @ryan's views on the topic of migrations and version control, but I do not recall seeing those expressed specifically anywhere. I also note that, in the other thread, @horst gave a "-10" to my suggestion that it was a really important topic. If they do not think it is important, I would really like to hear why. My viewpoint: I am not a tech wizard and my needs are quite simple; however, I have built a few sites in PW that make extensive use of its capability as a app-building framework rather than just a simple CMS. It is ideally suited to this purpose... ...except when you need to upgrade the live site. It is impossible to copy the live DB, change and test that then upload, without making it unavailable. Making anything but simple changes to fields and templates carries a high risk of human error. Wishlist As regards @MoritzLost's wishes: Absolutely. That would be helpful. The other wishes in the list are either 'nice to haves' or personal preferences (IMHO). I would add one other 'wish' at this point: "Ability to implement on an already-existing site." EDIT: And another 'Roll-back capability' Current state At the moment the core provides practically nothing. There are some export features but they are incomplete and buggy in places. @bernhard's RockMigrations module is a well-developed solution to the problem, but it is not really declarative and I think it is difficult to implement on existing sites. It is fine if you want to code rather than use the PW Admin UI and if you are doing everything the 'RockMigrations way' from scratch for a site, but I think it sits a little uncomfortably with the PW way of doing things. For these reasons, I developed 'ProcessDbMigrate' as a POC (This is extensively documented here). In fact it rather exceeded my expectations and achieves the following: To allow development to take place (in a separate environment on a copy of the live database, or on a test database with the same structure) using the Admin UI. When finished, to permit a declarative approach to defining the migration and implementing it (again in the UI). To allow testing of the migration in a test environment on a copy of the live database. To allow roll-back of a migration if installation causes problems (ideally while testing rather than after implementation!). To provide a record of changes applied. Optionally, if changes are made directly on the live system (presumably simple, low-risk mods – although not best practice), to allow reverse migration to the development system in a similar fashion. To provide a database comparison tool which can (if wished) be used to create a draft migration for the differences between the databases. I have no pride of authorship here (and I am sure some may think my coding is a bit hacky), but it is a fairly thorough attempt to address the wishes expressed above. It is declarative (using JSON rather than YAML). It deals with the content vs configuration issue by defining a 'scope' for every migration - in other words, it can be used when the distinction between content and configuration is a bit fluid (which is always a potential issue in any CMS). It can be simply implemented on any existing site by installing the module. However, ProcessDbMigrate does have some drawbacks. It introduces quite a few new templates, fields and admin pages which could confuse a user (although they are flagged as 'system'). It doesn't completely and accurately model all possible fields and templates so it does need to be tested on the chosen site before implementing. This is partly because it is 'POC' and partly because I couldn't find a definitive model. I know for certain that it does not cope with nested repeater fields. EDIT: plus if you use it to compare a whole database it will probably crash by exceeding memory limits - however, it is more reliable when scoped to genuine configuration matters. Way forward As I said earlier, I think the way forward should be collaborative. I also think that a module is more practicable, at least initially, than expecting a massive core upgrade; it is also more workable for a collaborative approach. I think that a specially moderated thread might be a good start, where the moderator is reasonably unpinionated but sufficiently experienced. Initially, views should be gathered (via a poll? - perhaps @teppo could facilitate this?) as to the need for a migration/version control solution. Then some ranking of the 'wish list' items followed by a selection of a 'doable' set of requirements. The existing solutions could then be compared with this list to assess whether any of them go some way towards meeting the requirements and might be adapted or incorporated (either as code or as a 'leg-up' on the specification). Alongside this, we need a complete and accurate published data model of fields, templates and pages. Futhermore, this would need to be kept up-to-date for core changes. Existing modules (particularly Fieldtypes) would need to be reviewed for compliance. @ryan's help with this would be essential. No doubt contributors to the thread will have their own views on how to progress things, but a willingness to make tangible contributions would be helpful! Conclusion Perhaps I have missed the point entirely, in which case, please explain, but my fear is that this discussion will just remain a discussion and it will be left to individuals with the motivation to provide their own solutions which inevitably will reflect their own personal preferences and needs.

Basically this was just a proof of concept to show that I could easily add a feature like this to RockMigrations and that this should in my opinion not be the point of the discussion... It was also there to show that it is just another way of making it easier for beginners to see a list of all the necessary or available properties of a field or template etc., but more on that later. Because? It does seem to be very interactive and maybe that causes problems. With ProcessDbMigrate I very much opted for batch creation of entity specs, which is easier to manage. Because - as far as I understood - the way it works makes it impossible to build reusable components which is a crucial part of being more productive and also increase quality. If you store migrations in a central place you lock the usefulness of that migration to the project. If you make it possible to store migrations where they logically belong (eg in a PHP class - or in the PW world in a custom page class), then you can create reusable components that you can move from project to project. Is that more complicated? Yes. Do you have to do that? No! You don't have to build modules and you don't have to write migrations in a component-based way. If you don't care you can simply put everything in /site/migrate.php This quotation is incorrect and unfair. If we are talking about this paragraph? I was just demonstrating here that there ARE situations where doing things by hand is slower. I've never said that using RM is quicker all the time. I have to lookup things myself now and then. My point is that if you take the whole picture into account this equation changes (as in this example doing the same changes somewhere else - either in a team or on another setup). That part is half unfair and half ok. The part that is ok is that I care more about my needs than I care about the needs of others. I hope you can understand that I am not keen on building a GUI based migrations tool when I know that I will not need it myself? Actually I do care about this much more than I should, but that's another topic... The unfair part is that I DO know how it feels to be overwhelmed by all this migrations stuff. I have been there when I first saw Lostkobrakais migrations module and I've had the same feelings (I guess) when he said "once you get used to it you'll be quicker writing code than doing things by hand". And I've heard the same last week when trying to understand the **** CMS where the core dev's show the product and nothing is as easy as they call it... And I've already taken the "feedback" and made the new version of RockMigrations MUCH easier to use and much easier to get started. Fine. Let's do that. I'm not against it. My point is that RockMigrations can serve both needs but with your approach I don't see a way to do this. So it's a little hard for me to read all those discussions and ideas and see (guess) where they would (could) lead to because I've been there... I understand these concerns. They are easy to solve: Your IDE gives you a dropdown as well - in VSCode its CMD+P (or similar on Windows): Most fields will just work with only the "type" attribute. For others I've started to build snippets as this is an issue that I have myself (so much for the topic putting myself into the shoes of less capable - I'm not better than you ? ? While the gif above shows that this is just another wrong statement based on false assumptions I want to add two more things. It's definitely not easy to remember all the properties of a field or of a template. But you don't have to! What if you wanted to change this field of a template? First option: TracyDebugger (works always): If that is too complicated there's also another option most of the time: And finally: Can I imagine that not everybody knows that? Yes. Why is that not in the readme? You'll get a similar answer to Ryan's related to the PW docs: I'm working on that alone. I'm not getting paid for anything here. And - and that's a huge difference to PW - I don't even know if anybody cares about migrations or RockMigrations in general. For a long time I thought nobody cares. But those threads show me that a lot of people actually do care about those topics. But still they seem to know nothing about RockMigrations. It's as if I'd create a thread "E-Commerce Wishlist for ProcessWire" without mentioning @apeisa or @kongondo 's Padloper and without doing my homework to research what their module does, where it has limitations, asking why they built it the way they built it etc... If that had happened the whole discussion would have been on a totally different level (at least for me) and the several arguments that have been correct (like for example the fact that PW stores language files in /site/assets/files) could have been communicated to @ryan and I'm sure he'd have been supportive to do whatever he can to make the core serve our needs (even if he does not yet have a migration/git based workflow). Amen ? And finally to quote @Robin S from the other thread because I created the video initially for you @MarkE before you wrote your follow-up: It seems like this should be doable via a module in PW. I have a work-in-progress module that does something like this. It's not complete and haven't looked at it a while but it seemed like a promising avenue at the time. I think if the concept could be illustrated in a module then Ryan might see the benefits and then hopefully incorporate the features into the core. Well yes, that's also very easy to achieve with RockMigrations.

OK @bernhard, I have now re read https://processwire.com/talk/topic/26565-share-your-pw-dev-setups-tools/?do=findComment&comment=220484 and haven't got much to add to my previous comment. I think a lot boils down to the target 'market' for the migration tool. PW actually has a rather broad user base - from those who want something just a bit more flexible than WP at one end to those who would be equally happy with a plain PHP framework. I have used both WP and CodeIgniter in the past and find PW way better than both. I am not a full-time professional developer - very much a part-time amateur on a few projects. I also hack around in Python from time to time. Consequently I do not instantly remember all the structures, attribute names etc. - the UI helps with all of that. My view is that the migration tool (or tools) should cater for the full range of users and not just for the pro developer. My reason for this is (similarly to @MoritzLost) that PW without migrations is not a great solution for anything other than simple 'build and forget' websites which (forgive me ?) you may as well do in WP. Part-time or more amateur PW users need to maintain and upgrade sites just like full-time pros, but less frequently. You say in the post referenced above that it is much quicker to type the code than use the UI. I am sure that is true for you and your team, but most certainly not for everyone. For example, creating a new field, you enter 'type' => 'text' - well, that's easy, but what are all the other fieldtypes called? I would need to look up their names - the UI gives me a selection drop-down. Have I entered all the necesaary attributes for my new field? I would need some sort of checklist to consider; in the UI it is all presented to you. The IDE helps with methods, for sure, but not with strings, and not with completeness. I appreciate it must be difficult to put yourself in the shoes of those less capable and experienced than you, but I think that is required to understand the needs of the wider user group. (I must admit that I don't understand @MoritzLost's problems with RockMigrations as I would have placed him in the super-pro category with you). You can take the view that only the super-pro group is important, but I think that only serves to marginalise PW. In my view, all users (other than those building very simple websites, for which PW is arguably overkill) need a solution to the migration/version issue even if they don't know it yet.

Thanks for the comments @bernhard. I'll do my best to reply. If, along the way, I demonstrate a misunderstanding about RockMigrations, please accept my apologies and help me to understand better - I have tried to use it but it didn't do what I wanted and I found it very time-consuming to try and get it right (admittedly this was some time ago and it has no doubt developed quite a bit since then). Equally, I would be grateful if you could try out ProcessDbMigrate, or at least read through the help file, and comment on the various pros and cons in order to advance the whole subject. A fair request. At its simplest, you could say that it is a (complete or, at least, sufficient) specification of the current state of the entity(ies) in question. Arguably, RockMigrations fits this definition, if you completely specify the entity. However that is time-consuming and it is simpler to just specify the changes (which is not fully declarative as it assumes a certain prior state). With ProcessDbMigrate, I was attempting to produce a declarative definition automatically, rather than having to code it. That might not be enough 'detail' but we can discuss further. Related to the above: to implement it in a declarative way required me to specify every field and template in full in code, by hand (at least for the migration scope in question). I had already done this via the UI and just wanted to produce the spec automatically from the database. Again, related to the above. There is not much point using the Admin UI to specify the fields etc. if you are going to do it via the API anyway. Many people like the UI and are less proficient at coding (typing, remembering all the structures and formats etc., even if aided by the IDE). Allowing specification via the UI does not mean that 'mouseclicks' need to be recorded - just that the config files need to be generated from the resulting database automatically (or at least programmatically). I hope you were referring to the OP here, not my post, as I did research all the prior migrations tools (even using some of the working bits of the core tools) and put a lot of work into my own solution. I quite agree. That's why I was suggesting some way of agreeing requirements and then reviewing the best way forward, which may be by adaptation of an existing tool. As regards YAML vs JSON vs PHP, I agree that it is not such a huge thing. After all, the PHP is just an array specification. However, I plumped for JSON as it seemed easier when I was wanting to automatically generate specs from the database. FWIW, my original intention was to generate RockMigrations-style PHP from the database and leverage your existing work, but I struggled with that (I did say I'm not a great tech...). That might still be a good way to go ? In doing so, could you please also address the roll-back issue (added as an edit to my first post). Other requirements that ProcessDbMigrate meets which I think RockMigrations currently does not include database comparison, preview and audit trail. Please read the help file to get a full picture of what it does before commenting on pros and cons.

The problem: how to refresh a page's frontend content in real time without a page refresh when the page has been edited in the backend. This is an alternative approach to the one discussed in the topic below. The above topic attempts to solve the problem using SSE. The solution in this topic instead relies on Local Storage and htmx. There is no ajax polling. Please note that auto-refresh here refers to a page refresh during the same session and in the same domain. It is not cross-site. The solution can be summarised as follows: Use a hook in ready.php to inject custom JavaScript to the ProcessWire backend admin, specifically in ProcessPageEdit. This can be a JavaScript file or inline script. The purpose of this file is to update a given Local Storage key after a page has been edited. Instead of listening to the Save Button click, the script just checks on load if a certain hidden input whose value matches the page currently being edited is present. This hidden input is placed inside ProcessPageEdit form using a hook as detailed below. The hook in this step #1 can be: $this->addHookAfter('AdminTheme::getExtraMarkup', null, 'hookAddCustomScriptsToAdmin'); In ready.php, add a hook to listen to saveReady(), e.g. $this->addHookAfter('Pages::saveReady', null, 'hookNotifyFrontendOfBackendPageSave');. When the page is saved, the handler method hookNotifyFrontendOfBackendPageSave will check if there are changed fields. It will then write to a temporary session variable for the current page with the names of the fields that have changed. On page load/reload, there is a hook in ready.php that monitors ProcessPageEdit, i.e. $this->addHookAfter('ProcessPageEdit::execute', null, 'hookAddMarkupToNotifyFrontendOfBackendPageSave'); The handler hookAddMarkupToNotifyFrontendOfBackendPageSave will check if there is a session variable set in #2 indicating that the page has had recent changes in the fields names set to that session variable. If this is true (that there have been changes), this hook will simply append the hidden input in #1 to the ProcessPageEdit form. The JavaScript in #1 will detect the presence of the hidden input. It will then amend the Local Storage value in #1. It cannot simply set the value to the ID of the page being edited as that will not be construed as a change. It will instead append a timestamp to the id of the page as well and set that as the value. This will enable a listener in the frontend, described in the following steps, to detect that change. In the frontend, we have a simple JavaScript file that listens to changes to the Local Storage storage Event. The frontend also has a simple hidden input in the template file whose pages we want to refresh. This hidden input has htmx attributes. Its trigger is a custom event 'autorefreshpage'. It will listen for this event before firing a message to the server. This hidden input also has hx-swap=none as nothing will be swapped to it. Instead, the server will send back results of changed fields in various markup with hx-swap-oob=true. That will enable swapping markup in any parts of the frontend html in one go. When the Script at #4 detects that a given Local Storage value has changed, it first checks if the page ID for that Local Storage value matches the page ID of the page currently being viewed in the frontend. If the answer is yes, it will fire the custom event autorefreshpage. This will make htmx fire a message to the server whose only value is the page ID it has been passed. On the server, in home.php, we have code that is listening to ajax requests. If it detects an ajax request, it checks if the page ID that htmx sent matches an available session that was recently updated. This would be the temporary session detailed in #2 above. If a match is found, it calls a function in _func.php that will set variables for fields for that page. These use partial templates (optional). These partial templates are for different outputs of the page, e.g. images, headline, etc and all their markup have hx-swap-oob='true' in appropriate places. All these content is sent back as one output back to htmx. It will read the hx-swap-oob and find the markup to replace in the DOM using the html IDs of the markup with the hx-swap-oob. This approach allows the developer to have maximum control over what to send back to htmx and over the markup. In this step, we also delete the temporary session, ready for the next updates. The result is as demonstrated below. A simple and effective DOM swap that places very little strain on the server. I'll clean up the code for this and upload to GitHub. This approach will not work with Save + Exit and similar :-).

Last year I started working with Craft CMS, a CMS roughly similar to ProcessWire in scope and target audience (developers). Since I like Craft a lot and found it has some great solutions for problems I had with ProcessWire, I wanted to write up a comparison between the two systems, point out similarities and differences. This is also intended to introduce some ideas that ProcessWire could benefit from. Admittedly, this comparison is a bit unfair – ProcessWire is completely free and open source, while Craft CMS requires a paid license for everything but very small projects. So while Pixel & Tonic, the developers behind Craft, can fund an entire team to work on Craft and developer support, ProcessWire is mostly maintained and developed by one person. Still, I think the comparison is worthwhile, since it could help focus development on the areas where ProcessWire (in my opinion) needs improvements the most. Disclaimer: I'm not associated with either ProcessWire or Craft CMS (Pixel & Tonic), and I'm not being paid for any of this. Pricing A regular Craft license for a single site is 299 $ in the first year, then 59 $ / year for updates (this is optional). If you don't need multiple user accounts and some optional CMS features, there's a free version as well. There are also premium plugins which come with licensing fees. There's no bulk/agency pricing, so you have to include the license fees in the calculation for every project. ProcessWire is completely free, though there are the commercial Pro modules. Some of those are required for almost every site, in particular ProFields (for the Repeater Matrix), so the average site probably won't be completely free. Those modules are available as agency licenses, so for agencies with lots of ProcessWire projects they are a pretty good deal. Content modeling Both systems are quite similar in this regard. You can create fields (chosing from a variety of field types) and create content types with any number of fields. ProcessWire calls content types templates, Craft sections – sections can further be divided into different entry types with different fieldsets. ProcessWire puts everything into a single page tree / hierarchy. This is handy in some situations, but all in all detrimental. First, you have to fit everything into a page hierarchy, even pages and content that don't have a natural place in the tree. This makes it harder for clients to find what they're looking for. Also, you're heavily incentivized to generate your site navigation based on the tree hierarchy, which is bad in the long run. Craft instead has top-level index views (in the backend) for every content type – entries, categories, users, etc. You can organize entries in a section in hierarchies or streams, depending on what makes sense for that content type. Craft also has a media library where you can upload assets independent of pages. ProcessWire doesn't allow you to do this. I'm actually fine with that, though many clients care about this for some reason. Interface Both ProcessWire and Craft have mostly nice, usable interfaces. The editing interface of Craft feels a bit cleaner and more modern due to being more restricted. ProcessWire opts to have lots of display options (and even replacable admin themes), which is handy in some situations. Craft is more streamlined, which makes it feel more coherent. Both approaches have their merit. Craft is actively working on improving accessibility and has a stated goal to be accessible. Meanwhile, ProcessWire at the moment doesn't make any claims regarding accessibility, and ryan seems to be actively opposed to the idea. Templates & Theming Both ProcessWire and Craft are developer-centric in that you have full control over your HTML output. Both systems have starter projects in lieu of themes, allowing you to start with a project template and customize it as you go, or start from a completely clean slate. A major advantage of Craft is the Twig integration which it provides by default. This is a contentious topic and I don't want this to turn into a debate of plain PHP templates vs. template systems. But Twig just has some advantages that plain PHP doesn't: Block-based inheritance is impossible in plain PHP, and without that you can't have fully extendable base templates without those base templates having knowledge of ALL extending templates or being so granular that they stop being useful. Twig forces you to separate logic and presentation, putting your business logic in services and/or controllers. All the other benefits that are always brought up in discussions about Twig, like security by default, simpler templating syntax etc. You can include Twig in ProcessWire, though it's a bit of extra work. And Craft's Twig integration goes much deeper, providing many useful functions to templates. For example, there's a cache tag that 'just works' (99% of the time) and allows you to cache parts of your template output. With ProcessWire, you have to use the $cache API manually and take care of cache keys, cache invalidation etc. Developer API & data access Both ProcessWire and Craft provide a strong API to query for content / data. They are actually quite similar in that you can query by content type or properties, search for field values, apply custom ordering etc, everything you would expect. One downside of ProcessWire's API is that it's string-based (there's an array alternative, but that isn't super reliable and not well documented). This means that you have to take care of input sanitization to prevent query injection. Craft's element queries use method chaining instead, which means you have better separation between query and data. This way, the the field type classes are responsible for sanitizing their inputs before adding them to the query, so you mostly don't have to escape user input manually. One downside of element queries in Craft is that they're quite hard to extend. Though that's to be expected because those queries support a lot more native features (multi-site support and expiration dates, for example). Multisite support Craft provides full multi-site support while ProcessWire doesn't. There is a third-party module for ProcessWire module, though that comes with zero guarantees that it will continue to work and is much less convenient than the built-in multi-site support. Not really an issue for sites that don't require multi-site capability, but a gamechanger for sites that do. Internationalization & localization Both systems support code I18N, and both support multi-language setups. Interace translations in Craft can be included as simple PHP files, though there are modules that extend this to provide an editor interface for string translations. ProcessWire does provide an interface, but it's clunky and heavily developer-centric, requiring you to chose files from a list, so you can't really ask clients to use it. ProcessWire also uses file scanning to detect translatable strings, which means you can't use it with custom setups (in particular, it's impossible to use with Twig). Finally, you can't really bypass the interface since translations are stored in JSON files in, essentially, random locations, so adding translations directly in the code editor is impossible. Field translations in Craft work with all built-in fields and all module fields and are well integrated into the developer API. ProcessWire's field translations suffer from the fact that they seem tacked on and not well thought out. For example, regular text fields can be translated inline. But if you want to translate an asset field, you need to add the second language's field manually, which feels weird and looks bad and unintuitive in the interface. Custom development Craft is built with Yii2, which most people will agree isn't the best PHP framework there is. But it does integrate nicely into Yii2, and you can also bypass them and build specific features using Yii2. The framework provides standard components for models and validation, controllers, views, etc. With ProcessWire, everything is homegrown. This makes it easier to get started at first, but hinders you in the long run, because there just aren't as many utilities, best practices and components to use for custom development. Oftentimes, you're either completely on your own, or have to dig through old forum posts and blog articles to find details (sometimes unfinished) features. Building custom features into ProcessWire isn't really encouraged or supported as ryan confirms here. Roadmap and feature policy Craft has a limited feature set, but supports those features well. Things like multi-site support, translations and live preview are built into the system from the start, provide strong APIs and all of those features work with each other. They also provide a roadmap so you can see what new features are coming next. All in all, Craft development seems organized and focused on their target audience. ProcessWire's feature approach is a bit … chaotic, to say the least. New feature seem to be added whenever ryan thinks of something cool to add. The problem is that most of those feature are never completely thought out and are quickly abandoned. There's hundreds of features that look cool but just aren't well supported – they lack documentation except for old blog posts, they have bugs that never get fixed, they don't work well with each other and so on. A much more limited feature set that can actually be supported with documentation, support, integration with other features would be preferable by a long shot. Documentation The Craft documentation is clear, well organized and provides a good overview of the system as a whole. It's It does lack a bit in depth, so for custom development you often have to look through the source code to find what you're looking for. There's also a generated and searchable class reference. ProcessWire's docs are also helpful in general, though they lack a clear structure and hierarchy, making it hard to read it back to back or find specific pieces of content. Its also missing most of the features that get added on a weekly basis – see the point above. This means the only way to discover or find info on those features is to root through old blog posts. Semantic versioning Semantic versioning is crucial for peace of mind come update time, so developers know whether an update contains bugfixes, new feature and/or backwards compatibility breaks. Craft, up until version 3, doesn't follow semver closely. The first digit (3) is reserved for marketing, while BC breaks are delegated to the second digit (e.g. Craft 3.6 -> 3.7). Bugfixes and compatible feature additions are lumped together into the third digit (though curiously, sometimes they add a fourth digit for urgent bug fixes). But starting with Craft 4, P&T will switch to full semantic versioning, so every BC break will bump the major version number. ProcessWire uses the first digit for marketing as well (ProcessWire 3). Unfortunately, it doesn't use the second digit at all, so we're still at 3.0.X years after the first PW3 release. And the third digit is just incremented whenever there's a couple of commits that need releasing, so it doesn't have any significance beyond the ordinal scale. This makes it impossible to know if a given update will cause problems for you. Ryan has stated somewhere (can't find the link) that this is because there haven't been any BC breaks since version 3.0.0 so far, which is … not true. At some point, an update broke the ability to upload SVG files to asset fields if you don't have the FileValidatorSvgSanitizer module installed. If this isn't a BC break, what is? Terminology This is a minor point, but it bugs me. Both Craft and ProcessWire have terrible terminology. Without looking, what do you think a section is in Craft? ProcessWire meanwhile overloads the term template to refer both to content types and the PHP files for those content types, making it really hard to talk about those. Have fun if you're using Twig as well, now there's three distinct things that are all called templates. ------------ I wanted to talk about version control as well, but this post is already a mile long, so that's gonna be a topic for another day.

There's been a lot of talk recently about managing ProcessWire sites in version control systems (git in particular). Currently, this is quite difficult. The most important reason is that most of the site configuration is stored in the database, which you can't track in version control save for a database dump. But beyond that, there are many features and functions that don't work well with version control. To keep it short, I'll try to list everything I would like to see in terms of version control support in a potential ProcessWire version 4. For comparison, a similar system that does fully support version control is Craft CMS, which is also the inspiration for many of the approaches and changes listed below. Goals and paradigms Version control isn't self-serving, but enables several important development practices and workflows. This includes the following: Having a complete version history for a site, and being able to revert to a specific version or restore earlier versions of specific files and features. Being able to work asynchronously on a project with multiple people, without the need for excessive coordination or a lot of work to merge parallel development work. Having a single source of truth for the entire site (excluding content) in version control. This allows you to: Set up automated deployment pipelines (dev -> staging -> production) with no manual steps required for a deployment. Set up new instances of the site (additional staging environments, new live site if the server burns down, etc) with little to no manual effort. Being able to switch between development branches and instantly sync up to the site state in that branch (especially useful for pull request reviews). Everything on following wishlist will be in service to those goals. The wishlist Declarative config. This is the most important thing. ProcessWire needs a config schema that includes all the fields, templates and site settings of the site, alongside tools to import/export this config. This allows you to modify the site configuration in a development environment and instantly apply those changes to other environments. There's been some discussion about declarative config vs migrations recently, so I'll just quote my points on this debate: More on that in this thread. For reference, Craft provides this in the form of the project config. Split ProcessWire into a starter project and a Composer dependency. ProcessWire is installed the old-fashioned way, by downloading a zip file and unzipping it in the web root. This leaves you with a problem – either include all the core files in your version control, which muddies your version history, or set up custom hooks or scripts to repeat this step during deployments. In addition, a default ProcessWire installation will include lots of directories and files where it's not clear if they belong to the core or are intended to be modified and included in your site repository. This can be solved by splitting ProcessWire into two repositories. One is the actual ProcessWire core, which can be installed as a dependency using Composer. The other is a starter project that only contains a site skeleton and is intended as a starter point for your site's directory. Other site profiles can become alternative starter projects that you can choose from. Craft comes as a starter project (craftcms/cms) which only includes the skeleton for the most important directories and files and installs the actual CMS as a dependency (craftcms/craft). Better directory structures. The current directory structure doesn't separate core files and site files well, and for many directories it's not clear whether you want them included in version control. For example, the site/assets/files folder contains uploads for assets, so you want to exclude them from version control, right? The problem is that for some file go into that folder that you do want to track, so you have to manage that manually. Translation files, for example, go into the assets folder, but you probably want those in version control. Another example are modules – custom site-specific modules go into the same directory as contributed community modules. You want the former in version control, but not the latter. Make modules installable with Composer. Pretty self-explanatory – currently you can only install modules by, again, unzipping folders manually or through the module interface. You can't install modules automatically during deployment (at least not without some custom scripting and workarounds). Making those installable with Composer would solve that issue. This goes for Pro modules as well. Better distinction between content and configuration. To support deployments that update a site configuration to a particular state while leaving content untouched, you need a clear distinction between config and content. This is important if you are developing in your local dev environment while the live site is constantly updated with content. If the site has user-generated content, you can't just import the development database from three weeks ago and call it a day. But for many settings and features it's not clear whether they are content or config. For example, what about multi-language sites – are the available sites content or config? Languages are just pages under the hood, so it looks like they're content – but there are some good arguments to be made for tracking the available languages in version control. Another example are page reference fields. Those allow you to select default pages and limit selectable pages to a specific parent page – but now you have content (specific pages) in your configuration. Those pages might not exist on the target system, so this feature might break unexpectedly in a different environment. For comparison, Craft's project config explicitly defines everything that goes into the config – everything else is content and won't be included in version control or deployments. Provide CLI tools for deployments. Many of the operations you need for a deployment can only be performed through the interface, so it doesn't work with fully automated deployments. To address this, ProcessWire needs to provide a CLI tool to automate those operations. For example, installing modules, synching up the project config (see the first point) and clearing caches need to be automatable. Craft provides a CLI with those and many other commands. Better integration with standard development tools. ProcessWire uses a lot of custom solutions instead of standard tools and practices. For example, it provides a custom interface and installation method for modules, which could be simplified a lot by just using Composer for module installations. By the way, it is possible to provide a user interface for Composer operations, Craft does exactly that. But I don't think this level of polish is necessary. Simply using standard tools and practices that are compatible with version control by default will reduce development time for those features and at the same time be easier to work with for developers. Support for environment variables. You don't want passwords and other credentials tracked in version control, and you want to be able to distinguish between environments (dev, staging, production) to toggle some features or change some settings. The standard way to solve this are environment variables. This way, you keep database configuration, SMTP servers, passwords to external services and so on out of version control and provide custom values for those depending on the environment. Craft, for example, allows you to change all configuration values based on the environment, and disables any configuration changes in production environments by default. Webroot in a subdirectory. This is a minor point and admittedly only tangentially related, but it's a no-brainer once all the other changes are made. The project root should not be the webroot because that makes all project files publicly accessible by default. To fix this, ProcessWire uses a lot of .htaccess rules and .htaccess files in subdirectories, but that only works if you're using Apache. A lot of modern server management tools use other servers, like nginx or Caddy, so those require additional work to secure a ProcessWire installation. The fix here is to point the webroot to a subdirectory (like web/ or public/) and only put files that you want to be publicly accessible in there. ------- All those changes constitute a major shift in mindset and approach, which is why I think they would need to go into a future ProcessWire v4. To be honest, at this point I don't think it's likely to happen, since Ryan has repeatedly signaled that he doesn't see the value in those changes. While there are promising attempts to solve this from the community, true support for the goals outlined above can only come from the core. As long as that doesn't happen, ProcessWire won't be an option for any projects that require more than one or two people working on it or that need continuous development and deployments – at least for me. Not as long as there are other alternatives, like Craft CMS, where I get all those benefits out of the box.

Thanks for all that @bernhard. I don't want to perpetuate a to-and-fro and would really welcome input from others too. I do want to say that I, for one, appreciate what you have done, even if I decided to go a different route. I will take another look in depth at RockMigrations, as it has clearly developed quite a bit since I first looked at it. However, the module info says that it has been archived and that you are working on a new version. Is it better if I wait for that? Also: Is there any documentation of best practices beyond the examples? For example, you mentioned putting migrations inside classes and, in particular, custom page classes, which sounds like a great idea, where it makes sense to do so. I use PhpStorm, which has many of the same features as your IDE. The snippets sound especially useful (Live Templates in PhpStorm). Are they available anywhere? (I note that there is what appears to be an old GitHub repository for some PW snippets, but I'm not sure anyone ported those to PhpStorm either). Maybe you can reflect on some of my comments about achieving broader appeal? I well understand that RockMigrations was developed for personal use and that there may be little motivation in meeting other needs (although your contributions to the PW community are already extensive...). Likewise my motivation was to develop something that met my needs. My reason for being concerned about the wider appeal and applicability of a migrations module is to sustain PW as a viable, well-supported and favoured solution, which is ultimately to the benefit of all its users, including me.

Thanks everyone for the valuable comments! I think it's great that we can return to a good discussion here after the bumpy start (which I'm certainly not innocent of as mentioned above). Hopefully nobody needs to hold grudges now. Thanks to Ryan in particular for the good summary regarding those issues. I think everything has been said regarding the interpersonal stuff now so I'll leave it at that ? @bernhard Given the above code example, I can add everything I want to the selector in the query parameter: https://example.com/?category=5,%20include=all This will result in the following selector: template=news, category=5, include=all. So now I can look at unpublished or hidden pages that the editors may not want me to see. This can be solved by sanitizing the query parameter, in this case with $sanitizer->int() or $sanitizer->selectorValue(). But this is something I have to do manually and remember everytime and everywhere it's used. And while it's simple for integers, it gets a bit more involved with strings. Finally, all of this relies on the implementation of $sanitizer->selectorValue() not having any vulnerabilities or implementation bugs, and no software is bug-free. You can solve all this, but reducing the surface area for issues like this is still really valuable. This isn't unique to ProcessWire, the other day I read a blog post regarding a known vulnerability with filter_var that hasn't been fixed yet … Sounded like Drupal up to the last two sentences ? You're right, having native support for migrations and config schemas doesn't guarantee the system itself will be usable. But on the other hand, you can have the best of both worlds and have an easy to use system with support for all those features.

I'd vote for Method 3: A custom DB table ?? Sorry but giving an elaborate answer here is very difficult and depends on so many things. So my recommendation above is just to give you an idea of another option that might be good to think of. Having JSON can also be a good option, especially if your DB setup supports it: https://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/8.0/en/json.html

Thx for your post @MarkE and sorry for not mentioning your module in the other thread ? Absolutely. 1) Could you (both) please explain what you mean by "declarative config". In detail. 2) Could you please explain what you mean by "RockMigrations is not really declarative". (Connected to 1) 3) Could you please explain why you think "RockMigrations is difficult to implement on existing sites". 4) Could you please explain why you think "it is fine if you want to code rather than use the PW Admin UI (*) and if you are doing everything the 'RockMigrations way' from scratch for a site, but I think it sits a little uncomfortably with the PW way of doing things." *) I can somewhat agree on that until here (though that's the whole point of the topic: Having the setup/config in files, not in mouseclicks...) but the rest could not be further from the truth. Sorry. That's why I think the discussion was not really helpful. It was full of opinionated assumptions and expectations without any noticable efforts in doing research in what we already have (and we have tools for that since 2016!), which concepts of the available tools work well, which don't, which could work differently (eg. having migration config in YAML rather than in PHP which seemed to be a huge thing for some whereas it absolutely means nothing to me. And: Which would be such an easy thing to implement into RockMigrations if need be...). I'll show why I think your statements are absolutely wrong in my opinion, but I'd be happy to hear your explanations first to get a better feeling of how RockMigrations is being seen by you or maybe also others, as I think that would be valuable feedback. Thank you ?

Based on nothing but gut feeling, the second. That's the way I did it last time I was importing JSON from somewhere, mainly because I was glad to be able to stop thinking about the horrible JSON object and concentrate on nice PW fields. If you were going to be really careful, some benchmarking might be in order, but I suspect there wouldn't be much in it, just what you're more comfortable dealing with.

I am receiving questions with respect to the release of Padloper 2. I have added an FAQ section to the first post here. Please have a look. Thanks.

Another 2 cents for the "not an essentiall comment"-jar. 1) WHAT A GREAT PLACE!! (by @bernhard) Indeed. This is one of the most friendly, most awesome and most advanced communities around. Hands down. This is almost a bit like "family" - at least for me. Thank you! Therefore... 2) Discussions like this are needed. Really! They are... hard to digest. Unfair. Emotional. Yet worth it at the end. I think ... first of all there are two people here that might want to "enjoy" a 1:1 discussion to clarify things. As both have very good and honest arguments here. This "clash" could and will be good. I personally think that there was only a slight offset in communication and perception - to be honest. Both aren't far away from each other. I personally hate/love those discussion in projects because they become super emotional right from the start and it takes way too long to calm each and everyone down to a common ground afterwards. Especially when there is a large team around that fires up the situation. Oh. But most of the time the project benefits from it. Therefore my idea of a 1:1 here. I personally enjoy giving harsh feedback. While I hate receiving harsh feedback. But that's life... I guess. We grow with it. It's sad that all comments "against" ProcessWire CMS/processwire.com end at one point aka @ryan. I don't know Ryan in person but still a bit through various discussions in various boards, threads and messages and really enjoy all of his insights, feedbacks and even more for what he has built and builds here - with ProcessWire. Has anyone ever noticed that he dedicates his sundays for this community? So much love for this! That's why I fully understand and support Ryan's post and feedback. Even though while Moritz has some good points as well. I understand Moritz's points here in some kind. I have my very own personal issues with ProcessWire CMS - some days more, some day less but most of the time I praise ProcessWire as the best solution ever. As it is for me and my projects. 3) Takeaways so far - for me (you are free to argue against my perception) This thread was and is some kind of bumpy but as Ryan, ProcessWire, and this community are... this is just another challenge we will laugh about in 12 months and enjoy what happened in the meantime all together. 4) Future outlook Maybe we as a community, devs, friends, however you want to call it should start outlining things WE could do. Not only demanding things and asking for whatever. Maybe we could offer solutions instead. Designers could create a new visual look. Marketers could offer USPs and target-group analysis. SEOs could work with that and look up whats interesting compared to other CMSs. AND. SO. ON. I can offer the SEO aspect in this, maybe frontend templates for very fast loading and awesome Google Insight numbers. Count me in on this! Ok. Ok. I put 2 dollars in the jar.

Sarcasm (scnr): I've noticed lately that the most valiant defenders of the opinion that PW lacks support for migrations are the ones that have never given https://processwire.com/modules/migrations/ (which dates back to 2016) and https://processwire.com/modules/rock-migrations/ (which has it's 3rd birthday next week ? ) a serious try ? ? Personal note: While I did not read your posting as offending as Ryan seams to have read it I can totally understand his reaction. I have not put a fraction of the time into ProcessWire compared to Ryan but still I was confused about some statements you made. And I know how it feels if you talk about things in a way you did in this thread and in a similar way you did in this thread and in this thread. It might not have been your intention, but it seems you are a bit quick in stating "how things are" and how they have to be... Back to topic (and I try to keep objective): -- Selectors -- Ryan has already answered here. I just want to add that I'm using array syntax for selectors a lot and I really like it ? BTW: Just noticed that it's also a birthday for selector array syntax: https://processwire.com/blog/posts/processwire-3.0.13-selector-upgrades-and-new-form-builder-version/#selector-engine-array-support Happy Birthday and thanks for being with us and being a reliable tool in my everyday work for the last 6 years ? Could you please explain the vulnerability here for others to learn from your example? -- Features -- I just wanted to share that I've had quite the opposite experience with a lot of tools that I've tried over the last view years. At first sight there was a lot of bling bling and shiny cool things, but at second sight I found limitations here and other annoying parts there. Maybe I've just tried the wrong tools but with ProcessWire my experience was exactly the opposite: My first impression was that it is by far too simple for what I need. Several years later I feel like I'm just scratching the surface ? -- Twig -- I'm SO happy that we don't have such a layer by default in ProcessWire!! I've not worked much with template engines but I've used smarty back in 2004 so it's not that I don't know that such tools exist or what they are for. Though what I do a lot is keeping my template files as clean as possible. How I do that? I use custom page classes everywhere and if I need just a little bit of logic somewhere I put that logic into the page class to keep things simple on the frontend part. What I really like here is one of the biggest benefits of PW of all: It keeps simple things simple and makes complex things possible (and fun). If you have just started (with PW or with web development in general) you can simply echo some page properties and see the result on the screen. No additional tools. No necessary build chain. No template engine. Just PHP and HTML. Great ? In my opinion ? I've recently had to try another open source CMS. That CMS has native support for migrations as everything goes into YAML files. It has fancy backend editing for everything. Fancy, yes. But that adds another layer of complexity to the whole thing as well. Imagine how long it took me to understand how I can create a single field and display the content of that field on the frontend? Long. Very long. I don't want to tell you how long. ? Because of all that fancyness that system uses a custom language for rendering all the fields. It was a terrible experience for me and I felt really bad that I as a quite experienced PHP developer was not able to achieve simple things in a PHP based content management system. One user commented on one of their youtube tutorials that it's another perfect example of a german product developed by a few geniuses but impossible to use for the average dev. I agree with him and I'm happy that ProcessWire takes another route! -- Documentation -- I agree that lots of information is scattered around somewhere (in the forum, in the docs or in code), BUT (and that's the part you didn't mention and which is just another example of why things might be taken personally): In my opinion ProcessWire (or Ryan) does a lot right in that regard and is way ahead compared to other tools I've used (maybe tried the wrong tools again). For example the docs in code are absolutely great! Nearly every method that I need to inspect has some explanation directly in code so I can quickly jump to that place in my IDE or even get helpful pieces of the docs instantly as tooltip: Next, the forum: WHAT A GREAT PLACE!! I've been on another system before I discovered PW. They had a forum as well... But I simply did not get help there. I posted a question and did not know if I'll get an answer in one week or two, if ever. That was such a pain and PW is so great in that regard! It might be a small community but the support is outstanding. I've also seen other products that have a discord channel or something similar. Maybe forums are old-school, but in my opinion they are still great and will be for a long time. You have an archive where everybody can find answers to their questions and learn from posted answers. And one other great thing is that 90% of those answers will likely still just work if you apply them today even if they are several years old. -- Version numbers -- What I'd pick up from that point is that some of the strengths of PW might look like weaknesses for others on first sight. Just as the simple and clean backend for me looked like PW is not capable of complex things the used version numbers and the fact that the github master branch might not see any updates for several months can give the impression to others that the project is not actively developed. It's a matter of everybody's perceptions and expectations. ProcessWire could to more in that regard. But on the other hand I really appreciate that it (or Ryan) does not care as much about that as other systems do. The downside of this is that it can be hard to sell to other devs and/or clients... -- A word to Ryan -- I don't agree with you here and I think that's a blind spot on your end. ? When I started developing my first custom Fieldtype it took me quite long to understand how things work. Learning from the events fieldtype was really hard! It is obvious and simple once you know how all the pieces play together (you basically just need an inputfield and a related fieldtype for sleep() and wakeup(), right?) but it was really not easy to start with a blank screen in my IDE without having this concept in my head and then put all those pieces together one by one trying to understand what they do and then making them do what I want. I guess we didn't even have TracyDebugger back then. ? (By the way - how great is Tracy?! Another invaluable tool in our Ecosystem that I don't want to miss!) I think it's similar to what happened when I first discovered the PW backend. This was one of the most liked posts in the forum so I think it was and maybe still is not obvious to many how easy it actually is to work with and customize the PW backend. As a side note I think that might be one reason why PW is still underestimated in regards to being not only a wonderful tool to create websites but also a wonderful tool to create web applications. And I have to do it again: I think RockMigrations is just another example of something in PW that looks more complex than it actually is. And an example of something that looks less powerful than it actually is. I've taken that learning from the other threads and already improved the module greatly. The next version will make it a lot easier to get started with. Maybe that will open some eyes. And maybe Ryan will also revisit this thread one day and will recap and pick up some of the things that were mentioned. There were some good points in it and the amount of reactions shows that, I think. So thanks for bringing those topics up @MoritzLost and thanks for the insights as always @ryan.

I agree it is unfair to make comparisons like this. I also don't think it's very nice to come to an open source project's support board and try to convince people to use a commercial CMS. Maybe the fact that a comparison can be made at all is a compliment. But Craft is a big commercial project with a sizable team and lots of resources and money behind it. ProcessWire is the opposite of that and the comparison seems inappropriate. But since you've stated this is a comparison, I'm not sure where the comparison is — you've focused exclusively on what you think Craft does better (by your own preference), but haven't made efforts to point out the areas where PW does better. So it comes across a little bit as an advertorial for large commercial CMS at the expense of a small open source project. Throughout you are stating a preference for something in Craft and claim a similar feature in ProcessWire is "not well thought out." This is wrong. A more honest statement would be that you and I clearly have different preferences, or maybe you don't fully understand something. But that does not mean that something that differs from your preferences or understanding is "not well thought out." I would never commit something to the core that hasn't been really well thought out, that's something I take really seriously. While much of Craft doesn't suit my own (and others) preferences, and may not be "well thought out" according to how I think things should work, I'm not going to join their forum and tell them it's not well thought out. That's because I respect them and trust that it's well thought out, according to their needs and preferences. So when you start telling someone that something they've put a lot of work into isn't well thought out, that's akin to saying that you do not respect them. I make no claims about being perfect at anything, and there is room for improvement in everything. What I take issue with here are the broad, subjective and largely false generalizations, and that's what I'm replying to. I'm also concerned that anywhere that you've quoted me, you've taken a statement by me out of context, extrapolating it as proof for an unrelated conclusion you've made. For example: In that link we are not talking about ProcessWire at all, and instead are talking about the processwire.com website in development, NOT the CMS. Why would you say I'm "opposed to the idea" of accessible development? This is something I'm interested in and passionate about. I don't understand why you are quoting me on one thing and saying another. In that link, I'm writing about a module called ProcessUser and something that is imposed upon it for a specific security purpose, unique to that particular module, and no other. But you have used my statement as proof that building custom features in ProcessWire isn't encouraged or supported. Nothing could be further from the truth. I have never had such a thought. My thoughts and intentions would be exactly the opposite. What you consider an advantage, I consider a major disadvantage. PW puts nothing between you and PHP, by design, that's a major advantage. I certainly would not be happy with Twig integration being a default. Clearly you like using Twig, which is fine for you to have that opinion, and I think it's perfectly fine for Twig to be an option. But I definitely wouldn't want to standardize upon it. Maybe it doesn't suit your preference, but I hope you can appreciate why we don't do things like that in PW. You are comparing two different kinds of caches. You are talking about a template engine cache. In PW there is no template engine, so likewise no template engine cache. Most of the time you would never need such a cache in PW at all. The $cache variable is something different, and while it can also cache markup, it is much more simple than you imply. PW's API is not string-based. You are writing about selectors (and specifically selector strings), not the "API". ProcessWire lets you specify selectors as strings or as arrays. Most prefer to use strings due to the simplicity of it. But this does not mean that arrays are not reliable. And if you use arrays, then there's no need to do value sanitization. But the majority of the time you are using selectors, you are not injecting user input into it either, so I would consider selector strings to be a major advantage for PW the vast majority of the time. And for times that it's not, you don't have to use it. The problem with chaining methods for this is that they are live code, you can't store them. Perhaps it has benefits in Craft, but they would not be appropriate for PW. In PW selectors can be specified as arrays or strings, and in cases where you want to separate the query property from the query value, then that's why we have the array option in PW. And yes, they are reliable, despite your claim that they are not. The same is true in PW. Fieldtypes build the query and sanitize/validate the value to be queried. The only thing PW asks you to do is IF you are using a selector "string" that ALSO happens to contain user input, then just sanitize that user input part with the selectorValue() method. If you are using an array, then such sanitization is already done for you. This has nothing to do with details of a fieldtype, which will do its own validation/sanitization. Saying "clunky" is a subjective and hardly fair statement to make. What might be clunky to you is optimal to others. You are writing specifically about the file translation system, so the whole purpose is to provide an interface to translate your site php files (primarily template files). The interface is geared to focus on that task only, and that's the point of it. I understand you value more layers between things (like with Twig), but I always prefer fewer layers, a more direct approach, so you'll see that throughout PW. If I'm using a file translation system, I want to know what file I'm working with and I want to be able to tell the translator what file to work with. That my preference, and I understand you have a different one. Of course you can, that's who it is for. Yes they are grouped by file, and that's how I prefer it, and I have never had a client have a problem with that. If you have some preference to keep translators/clients out of the admin, you can also ask them to translate from a spreadsheet (exported from PW) and PW will happily read that in and use it. None of those 3 statements is true. Translations may be stored in JSON files, but they can be exported/imported (all files at once) to/from CSV files. Translation files are not stored in "random" locations. They are stored with the language's files, which is a static location identified by its ID. Adding translations in the code editor is not impossible, because where else would you add new translations, if not in the code? If you need a new translation, go ahead and add your __('text') in your code, and it immediately becomes available as a translation. You are welcome to your opinion, but as someone that put a lot of thought and effort into field translations, it's hard for me to take your opinions seriously when you state things like this. Nothing about them is "tacked on" or "not well thought out", quite the opposite. So to me it seems like at worst, you don't understand what you are talking about, or at best (and most likely), you just have an alternate preference. This is fine, but I don't think that's obvious to everyone reading. So please don't make statements like "not well thought out" when you really mean that something doesn't suit your preference, or maybe you don't fully understand it. I appreciate examples but I'm not aware of any field where you need to "add the second language's field manually". This does not sound at all like PW multi-language fields. If you are talking about PW at all, perhaps you are talking about the "language alternate" fields option? If so, this is an option that is there to provide additional flexibility for specific cases, but it is almost never used in my experience. Please don't use it as a foundation for any comparison, as its borderline deprecated at this point and I don't expect many will ever use it. This conclusion is the opposite of the truth. The fact that PW doesn't impose a specific framework upon you means that all options are open. Anything is available to you. It is more open, not less open. It's you and PHP, and anything you can run in PHP you can run in PW. ProcessWire feature approach is built around constant improvement. It is driven by the community and the needs of clients. The development of PW has always followed this approach. I have a job working with clients just like most PW users and so I develop according to what's needed and when. Most of my income comes from client work. I work on the PW core for free, so development usually has to have some crossover with the other projects that I work on. Despite being open source and largely unfunded, the fact that PW and Craft can end up with apparently similar capabilities and feature sets—and the fact that they can be compared at all—I would consider to be a sign of efficiency and that we are doing something right. If you consider our approach "chaotic" then fine, but the accurate terms would be "flexible", "sustainable", "consistent" and "continuous". The approach been very successful for PW as a project. And PW is also one of the longest lasting projects in this area (open source or commercial), and will continue to be because it's not built around money. I don't add features without completely thinking them out. That's silly, why would we do that? I would never commit something to the core that has not been well thought out. I don't understand why you would say this unless you just don't understand it. Nothing committed in the core has been abandoned. Elsewhere, I've abandoned a ton of code, but most of it has never been seen by anyone. When I commit something to the core, I've spent a lot of time working on it and I'm also committing to supporting it, long term, for as long as there is value in it. That's another reason why I take a lot of time to think through anything that gets added. You are welcome to say that you have a different preference, and you can I clearly have different preferences, but please do not suggest something is not well thought out because that is not true. Well, I'm glad you think there are "hundreds" of features that look cool... though not well supported? I don't know what we're talking about. False. The only bugs that don't get fixed are those where they cannot be duplicated, or that don't have a clear solution and seem to be isolated to one person. And I don't know what you mean about "don't work well with each other and so on". ProcessWire's core focus is already a limited feature set, where much is left to modules. The aim is to have everything you might "need" and do it really well, but save things you might "want" for modules. This is one area where it certainly does help to have a big commercial company behind it, with full time documentation writers and such. While they do have a structure and hierarchy, I understand it may not be exactly the way everyone might want it. The site search engine is actually quite powerful and searches the API and all documentation pages, so I recommend that when you want to find something specific. This is fair, and it'll continue to be that way, the blog posts can do heavy lifting in between the time that features are added and documentation is updated (as does this forum). The blog posts do also end up as the linked documentation for features in some cases. I'm okay with it. I understand that if we were a big company it might be odd though. I don't put efforts towards pretending that PW is a big company, I work within the resources we have, putting most of it towards where it counts and less of it towards pleasing critics. The aim is that all versions are compatible, meaning you can safely upgrade from any older version to any newer version. I don't know of any other projects that do this as well as PW, so I would consider it a major benefit. If we get to the point where this is regularly not the case, then we likely would adopt semantic versioning. But the need isn't there at this point in time. Close, but not totally accurate. New versions are currently aimed at a group of new related features or a group of issue fixes. The version number goes into systems that prompt people to upgrade, at the time it is appropriate to do so. They are also for documentation purposes so that we can easily reference them in "since" statements. Lastly, it's useful to have version numbers to reference in blog and/or forum posts. Currently this system of version numbers is the most beneficial one for this project. This isn't what I'd consider a breaking change. This is something where it just asks you to install a module as part of an upgrade to the version, it doesn't break the API or the site, just locks down a specific admin feature for security until you install the appropriate module. And security always comes first in PW. But I don't think there are any actual breaking changes in PW. Again, if it became commonplace like it is in other projects, then we'd likely adopt the same version number approach they do. So perhaps that's something that will come in the future, but we're not at that point. I'm open to it at the appropriate time. A "template file" is a "file" for a "template". I don't know how to be any more clear than that. But yes there are instances where we're talking about template files that I might use the term "template" rather than "template file" since the context is established. I agree that terms like "template" and "file" are fairly generic, and it would be nice if templates were like cars where we could refer to the "car" but also have a label like "wheels" and know we are still referring to the bigger "car" above it. But "file" is a generic enough term that while accurate, needs context. I'll take it as a compliment that you consider RepeaterMatrix to be so valuable. The Pro modules were never intended to be "required" for any site. They are meant to be a luxury or a time saver, but there's nothing you can do with any Pro module that you can't do yourself by some other means. Though Pro modules might save you time in doing it. I've built example modules that show you how to do do just about anything that Pro modules can do, they just might require more of your effort. The original intention for Fieldtypes and Inputfields was that everyone would build their own according to their needs, but I don't know many that do that other than me. Have a look at FieldtypeEvents sometime to see how simple it is to do. I don't share your opinion on this. If you are of the mindset that the page tree reflects the front-end site 1-to-1 then you are in the mindset of a different system. I consider the tree to be essential, a major benefit, as you know everything has a place and hierarchy and you don't have to have various different kinds of navigations or buckets to find them. If you know one thing you know everything in PW. I've never been a fan of different bucket systems and the ambiguity that they introduce. ProcessWire was designed from the beginning to get away from what you are talking about, what I subjectively feel is a mess in other systems (again, my preference). PW aims to be simpler and more flexible than that, though pages can still be browsed as a tree or as buckets, even if the tree is the source. I don't agree with your premise, or the linked post. Having a link to someone else's opinion does not make it right, maybe just right for you personally, that's fine. I would agree that there are benefits to letting the page tree influence your navigation, but there aren't drawbacks to not using it that way either. It may have started that way. While I am currently the gatekeeper in terms of maintaining the core I consider ProcessWire to be a long term community developed project, and it becomes more that every year. Every open source project needs someone to start it, and someone to be a caretaker, ensuring the quality of it, and I see that as my role, which I take very seriously. But this is a team project and one that is much more sustainable long term than a commercial one.

A few weeks ago I told you about a new module I was working on that automatically saves front-end form submissions and can send email reminders for the user to finish their form. The module is called FormAutoSaver. This week I finished up that module and have released it both in the ProDevTools board and the FormBuilder board, and it's available for download now. Note that it is first release/beta test version right now. This module can be used with or without FormBuilder. Though when used with FormBuilder it is more of a turn-key setup that can be done in the admin. I've put together a dedicated FormAutoSaver documentation and information page on the site, so rather than repeating a lot of information here I'll point you to that, if you are interested in it. I also wanted to mention that a new version of FormBuilder has also been released this week (v52). There aren't any major feature additions to write about here, but there are several small improvements and bug fixes. By the way, I've added FormAutoSaver to one FormBuilder form on this site: the site submission form. There's not much to see, since it silently works in the background. But if you want to try it out, fill-in some or all of the form (making sure to fill in your email address), but don't submit the form. Feel free to leave the form or even switch devices. You should get a reminder email in 5-10 minutes with a link to finish your form. While you are there, please submit recent sites you've built in ProcessWire, we love seeing your work! My kids are starting spring break from school next week, so I'll be mostly offline and likely won't have any updates next week, but will be back to core updates after that and hopefully getting ready for a release candidate of our next master version shortly after. Thanks for reading and have a great weekend!

Just a try to understand this in regard of PW fields and templates: Would this go in a (yet simplified) direction like automatic write down *ALL* fields and template config into a file (or 2 files) for the export. And on the import, first wipe out all existing (current) config and restore / build the given state from the 1 or 2 files?

Module for hiding pages for non-superusers. Download HidePages Requirements ProcessWire 3.x Changelog 1.0.1 (31 March 2018) Module renamed to prevent confusion 1.0.0 (30 March 2018) Initial release

Just committed a small, but I think quite useful option. You can now choose to replace the SVG thumbnail in the admin page edit view with a rasterized version - primarily for speed of display. All the details about the image will still refer to the original SVG, and viewing the full sized version (in the lightbox) will still be the SVG. The reason I added this is that on one site we have been uploading many very complex SVGs and using the rasterize() API method to display them on the site. We still want the originals to be in SVG though so that resizing results in no loss of quality, and also so we can offer the SVG as a downloadable version. The problem was that during page edit, the SVGs were taking too long to render in the browser. Hope this helps others too.