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A storm rolled through Saturday and somehow severed our fiber internet connection. So I was offline for half of the week. But that was fine because I didn’t need an internet connection in order to start developing the new PW site design. I’ve been busy primarily with the template files and CSS this week and am making good progress and having fun. One of the new additions to the site is one suggested by the designers, which is to have a features section and call attention to and provide more details about ProcessWire’s broad set of features. For each feature, we'll have a short title, a 1 sentence summary, and a body copy page of details (if they click to "learn more"). As I begin writing the content for this, I could use your help: What are the features of ProcessWire that you think deserve the most attention? (Especially when it comes to attracting new users). I’ll be writing text to describe a dozen or more features in detail, but wanted to make sure I’m focused on those that are most interesting to our current and future users. Thanks for your feedback, and have a great weekend!

The main reason I switched to ProcessWire was the fact that I could add an unlimited amount of templates with 100% custom fields to my projects. Back in the days WordPress had two types of content: posts, pages - I remember when the feature to have pages was added. 😂 So I started using Textpattern which allowed me to have at least 10 custom fields and individual page templates. Which worked pretty well for a while but ... after some time I needed more fields, more templates, and found ProcessWire. In that moment I was able to create templates for books, restaurants, movies, musicians, whatever type of data I wanted and needed. Fields became more than just strings or dates. It was possible to have textareas, repeaters, tables whereever and whenever needed. That was pretty much 10+ years ago. 🤯 Oh... and of course having this was awesome as well: an unlimited amount of backend users, user roles, access management, multilanguage support, resource friendly and worked perfectly fine even on low-end cheap shared hosting.

Xforum is a proof of concept front end forum system and is currently for local testing only. To install, have a blank site ready using the newest Processwire version. Follow the instructions found in the xforum_install.txt file. There is no help documentation at the moment, but it is pretty easy to figure out once you click around a bit. I'll attach any new help files here as they are created. Have fun with it and any questions please don't hesitate. XforumPOC_1.0.0.zip

Ever felt like your ProcessWire emails look like they're stuck in 1999? You know the drill - sending emails is super easy with WireMail: $m = new WireMail(); $m->from('foo@bar.com'); $m->to('xxx@yyy.com'); $m->subject('Hello there!'); $m->bodyHTML('<h1>This is great!</h1><p>I am an ugly mail...</p>'); $m->send(); But let's be honest - they look about as pretty as a website built with Microsoft FrontPage! 😅 🪄 Enter the Mail Pimp Hook! Drop this magical hook into your /site/ready.php (or even better Site.module.php), and watch your emails transform from ugly ducklings into beautiful swans: <?php $wire->addHookBefore('WireMail::send', function(HookEvent $event) { // double check that we got a wiremail instance // this also tells the IDE what $mail is (to get IntelliSense) $mail = $event->object; if (!$mail instanceof WireMail) return; // get current mail body $html = $mail->get('bodyHTML'); if (!$html) return; // get email layout markup $layoutFile = wire()->config->paths->templates . 'mails/default.html'; if (!is_file($layoutFile)) return; // replace ##content## with actual mail content $html = str_replace( '##content##', $html, wire()->files->render($layoutFile) ); // write new body to mail $mail->bodyHTML($html); }); The HTML Just create a beautiful MJML template at /site/templates/mails/default.mjml, put ##content## where your email content should go, convert it to HTML and BOOM! 💥 Every email gets automatically wrapped in your gorgeous template. No more CSS wrestling matches, no more "Why does this look different in Outlook?" headaches. Just pure email beauty, automagically! ✨ Now your clients will think you spent days crafting those emails, when in reality, you're sipping coffee while your hook does all the heavy lifting. Work smarter, not harder! 🚀 #ProcessWire #EmailMagic #NoMoreUglyEmails PS: This is the MJML template that I used: <mjml> <mj-head> <mj-attributes> <mj-all font-family="Tahoma" /> <mj-text line-height="140%" /> </mj-attributes> </mj-head> <mj-body background-color="#efefef"> <mj-section background-color="#ffffff" background-repeat="repeat" padding-bottom="30px" padding-top="30px" text-align="center" > <mj-column> <mj-image align="center" padding="25px" src="xxx" target="_blank" width="200px" alt="Logo" ></mj-image> <mj-text>##content##</mj-text> </mj-column> </mj-section> <mj-section> <mj-column> <mj-text font-size="10px" color="#a0a0a0" align="center" > powered by <a href="https://www.baumrock.com/" style="color: #158f66" >baumrock.com</a > </mj-text> </mj-column> </mj-section> </mj-body> </mjml> VSCode has an extension to get a live preview and export MJML to HTML: And here are some other free templates: https://mjml.io/templates I use https://www.base64-image.de/ to add the logo to my mail template as src="data:image/jpeg;base64,/9j/4QAWRXhpZgAATU0AKgAAAA..." to avoid headaches with image paths, remote assets blocking etc.

Hello there friends, As a learning challenge, with Claude Sonnet AI's help, I installed the PEST testing framework and created a bunch of tests for Ryan's Invoices site profile. I'm pretty happy with it. 🙂🙂 You can check the project on GitHub: https://github.com/sjardim/processwire-invoices-with-pest To try it, just install the site profile on a fresh PW project as instructed here: https://processwire.com/blog/posts/invoices-site-profile/ and copy my project's : the entire /test folder, phpunit.xml file and composer.json file and install composer dependencies. Next, in your terminal, run `./vendor/bin/pest --filter=InvoicePageTest` to see the magic. Here's a preview of the InvoicePageTest class: I hope this help you in your testing journey!

Further to what @wbmnfktr said, I think ProcessWire can be described as a low code data designer. You still need a front end developer to build public facing pages, but potentially someone with no backend development skills can build a complex range of templates for different data. In more complex scenarios, yes, it might be necessary to write some modules or hooks, but a huge amount can be done without writing a single line of code, but later, if people want to package up and subject to source control, there are third party modules like RockMigrations that allow taking all the field and template definitions and storing them as migrations files. In a sense, ProcessWire in this respect is like a headless CMS of which there are a few out there that allow custom data design without coding. But wait there's more. ProcessWire can be used as a no code/low code headless CMS, but it also assumes that you'll want to output the data somehow, and give you all the tools to do it, without being opinionated. If you just want to output fields directly into HTML template files with some simple PHP codes, fine, you can do it. If you want to output as API calls and use a javascript frontend framework, you can do it. (Not a core feature, but there is a third party module to enable it) If you want to use a templating language, you can do it. (also via third party modules, or use your own)

@bernhardAwesome! I love it. Also, I've added more to the repository 😎

This reminds me of the AIDER Architect Workflow i saw a while back. In short: 2 instances one for a technical concept/developer manual one for doing the work the first instance uses Gemini Flash, Deepseek R1, or an OpenAI Reasoning model and puts every little detail into separate files the second instance uses Claude Sonnet 3.5 and does all the heavy code lifting Your workflow is super similar, yet way slimmer and probably faster for most tasks. Need to try this in my rules!

I took a way easier route and grabbed the one from Yifan here: https://gist.github.com/yifanzz/3cfb8f9065769ffbf94348255f85597d more details: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aG-utUqVrb0 At one point I gave this one a try but will keep only parts from it in the next iteration of my rules file. https://github.com/kinopeee/windsurfrules/blob/main/v5-en/.windsurfrules Another thing I started doing is adding files with examples: PHP or programming isn't the real issue with any of the current bigger LLMs, but ProcessWire itself as there isn't that much training data around - compared to WordPress, NextJS, Angular, ... whatever. So adding the examples makes it pretty easy and drops the amount of credits needed by a good margin.

Thanks for sharing this. It is much more comprehensive then mine: # Project Guidelines ## Expert Knowledge - ProcessWire CMS PHP development - Tailwind / Flowbite markup and classes ## Core Technical Requirements - PHP 8.3+ - ProcessWire CMS - Tailwind CSS - ES6+ JavaScript - Webpack NPM/NPX ## Development Principles - PSR-12 and SOLID compliance - Type-safe PHP implementation - Defensive programming with early returns - DRY code organization - Exception handling with WireException - Logging via ProcessWire log() API ## ProcessWire Best Practices - API-first development approach - Markup regions for output processing - Strategic hook usage in site/ready.php and site/modules/Site.module.php - Input sanitization through PW API - CSRF protection implementation - Field/template migrations with RockMigrations - use of functions API preferred. (`pages()` instead of `$pages` etc.) ## Frontend Standards - Mobile-first Tailwind / Flowbite design - WCAG 2.1 accessibility compliance - Progressive enhancement strategy - Modern browser support (last 2 versions) - CSS custom properties Will definitely take some inspirations from yours. Judging from parts of your rules, it almost seems like you might have read https://neoexogenesis.com/posts/rust-windsurf-transformation/ :-)

@bernhard Thanks for your massively helpful debug code. I can see now that the Users::* hooks apply to managing users in the back-end so it was never going to work with LRP — the LRP-specific ones are what I needed.

Just gave it a super quick try, while giving guidance based on existing code and purpose. I used Deepseek V3, as it is giving me more issues than Claude or OpenAI on average, and ... even though it was a simple task it did a great job. I need to test on the weekend with this as my current rules do things here as well - as they should. The rephrasing might just be the cherry on the top! Claude Sonnet does a great job as always but faster.

Actually, my rule is quite different from aider architect mode where the architect agent plans and lays out the implementation steps on a higher level and then passes that to the coding agent. Love aider and am getting really great results with it, too. My prompt simply rephrases the original user prompt in more technical terms and most of the time more on the spot for the request at hand. Please let me know how it is working for you. Since the prompt is just a few days old, there might be room for improvement.

This might be helpful:

Hey @FireWire thx again for sharing your block thumbnails! I have just made it a lot easier to explore/find/use them and added this field to the module config screen where you can just click on the icon and it will copy the name to the clipboard that you can then just paste into your "thumb" property of the block's info method 😎

This hook is used to monitor file changes and page updates in your ProcessWire project. It operates when debug mode is active and returns file changes and latest page update information in JSON format. The script hook is automatically injected before the </body> tag in your HTML. It periodically checks for any file or page updates in your system at the interval you specify. If the previous check time is older than the new check time (indicating changes), the page automatically refreshes. ~/site/ready.php if ($wire->config->debug) { $wire->addHookAfter('Page::render', function (HookEvent $event) { $script = <<<HTML <script> const browserSync = { mtime: 0, init() { this.sync(); }, sync() { fetch('/browser-sync') .then(response => response.json()) .then(data => { if (!this.mtime) { this.mtime = data.max; } else { if (data.max > this.mtime) { location.reload(); } } }); } }; browserSync.init(); setInterval(() => browserSync.sync(), 2500); </script> HTML; $event->return = str_replace('</body>', "{$script}</body>", $event->return); }); $wire->addHook('/browser-sync', function (HookEvent $event) { $wire = $event->wire(); $root = $wire->config->paths->root; $siteRoot = $wire->config->paths->site; $extensions = '*.{php,js,css}'; $paths = [ "{$root}src/{$extensions}", // custom composer package "{$root}src/src/{$extensions}", // custom composer package "{$siteRoot}{$extensions}", // ready.php, init.php, finished.php "{$siteRoot}classes/{$extensions}", // page classes "{$siteRoot}templates/{$extensions}", "{$siteRoot}templates/*/{$extensions}", "{$siteRoot}templates/*/*/{$extensions}", "{$siteRoot}templates/*/*/*/{$extensions}", "{$siteRoot}templates/*/*/*/*/{$extensions}", ]; $files = []; foreach ($paths as $pattern) { // Try with GLOB_BRACE first $result = glob($pattern, GLOB_NOSORT | GLOB_BRACE); // If no results with GLOB_BRACE, try without it if (!$result) { $result = glob($pattern, GLOB_NOSORT) ?: []; } $files = array_merge($files, $result); } $filemtime = 0; foreach ($files as $file) { if (!is_file($file)) { continue; } try { $mtime = @filemtime($file); if ($mtime && $mtime > $filemtime) { $filemtime = $mtime; } } catch (\Exception $e) { continue; } } $latest = $wire->pages->get('sort=-created|-modified'); $latestTime = $latest->modified > $latest->created ? $latest->modified : $latest->created; header('Content-Type: application/javascript'); echo json_encode([ 'max' => max($filemtime, $latestTime), 'mtime' => $filemtime, 'modified' => $latest->modified, 'created' => $latest->created ]); exit; }); } This development tool helps streamline your workflow by automatically refreshing the browser when you make changes to your files or content, eliminating the need for manual page refreshes during development.

@bernhard Yes, I know about it. However, I prefer not to use modules for these kinds of things, as my work approach would need to adapt to each module used. I am using Vite for these purposes instead. Before developing this script, I was using the AllInOneMinify module for ProcessWire. Later, I switched to JavaScript-based compilation solutions: First moved to Gulp with Browser Sync Then migrated to Webpack Currently using Vite Among these tools, Vite has proven to be the lightest solution, and I'm getting exactly the results I want with my Vite configuration. While using Vite, I wondered "Why don't I implement my own browser sync solution?" This led me to write this lightweight script, which works remarkably well. And I'm happy with this setup!

This week on the dev branch are 8 issue resolutions. The most significant one #2035 (found by @Jonathan Lahijani) is that when you trash a page with children, and then later restore it, the page gets restored correctly, but the children/descendants only partially get restored. By that I mean that the children would get moved out of the trash, but they'd continue to have trash status. So those pages could silently behave like they were in the trash, making them visible in the PageList but otherwise inaccessible. There wasn't really any way to fix it interactively, since you can't manually assign or un-assign trash status, at least not without using the API. While I suspect this bug has been around for a very long time, I couldn't find any installations where I had trashed and restored a nested structure of pages like this, but was able to reproduce it manually. Just in case any of your installations have pages like that, the PageList (as of this week's commits) now highlights them with both trash and warning icons. Fixing the issue is just a matter of editing the page and clicking Save. If you want to quickly check if you have any pages affected by the issue (in almost any PW version), you can paste in the following URL, assuming /processwire/ is the path to your admin: /processwire/page/search/for?status=trash&has_parent!=7&include=all While it might be rare to trash and restore a structure of pages, I want to make sure nobody is affected by it so I'll likely update the current main/master version within the next week, merging the current dev branch. Coming in ProcessWire 3.0.246 is support for another type of conditional hook which enables you to match the return value, or properties of the return value, for any hooked method. Currently conditional hooks let you match things from the object being hooked, or the arguments of the method being hooked, but it's not previously been possible to match the return value of of methods with conditional hooks. Next week it will be, which I think as a useful improvement to our hooks system. More on that next week. Thanks for reading and have a great weekend!

Hey @Spinbox thx for your good eye! 🙂 I've removed the comments. I think I pushed them by accident. Please grab v5.21.1

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