JeffS

@jan Are you using the new blog profile or did you set the value of $blog_entry in your own code in this template? Here is an example using a normal wire $page array <?php // get the image $page if your talking normal pw. If your using the blog profile then .. $image = $page->blog_images->first(); // check to see if you have an image if ($image) { // set the image size (crop to 500x500) $blog_thumb = $image->width('500'); // output your image echo "<img src='{$blog_thumb}>"; }

MODx is a great tool. No doubt. However when I compare the code and work required get things done in it versus PW, PW comes out ahead as a winner for the types of sites my shop builds. We are busy converting three content heavy sites from MODx. These were due for upgrades from MODx Evolution. There are another dozen that will be in the switch over queue before too long. I worked with MODx Revo and deployed a few sites on it, but honestly there was a lot of extra overhead and a new API to convert our custom modules (snippets) to. I could not justify the work to upgrade as I did not see enough benefits. Clients will pay for new features, just usually not for the coding required to update the backend. I felt a sense of dread, instead of excitement, when I heard the news of MODx V3. The API has completely changed once already and I was not excited to start over again, again. Not knocking MODx here, built some well performing sites with it. Even donated $. I wish the team continued success. I decided to keep looking around for a better solution. I have used EE, Drupal, Wordpress, Pyro CMS, and a few others. Each with different strengths and weaknesses. Luckily came across PW. Lurked for a while, kicked the tires, built a few mockups. Discovered that all the things I typically need to do, are simple calls to the API, and some logic coded in PHP. Everything is an extension of the API. The front end, the back end. I love the whole concept of leveraging the document tree, getting parents, siblings, children, and the whole ancestry easily through the API. This matches with the type of highly structured sites I usually build. The selector logic make it simple to pull content from wherever it lives. I can park any kind of structured content wherever I see fit. Usually the CMS interferes with the IA. Not with PW. The PW API is very clean and so is the logic. I am very productive with it so far, and it has exceeded my expectations. The content editors like the backend and find it easy to work with and publish / update content. PW has moved front and center in the shop and will be the basis for most all CMS projects going forward. No going back. Kudo's to Ryan and the forum participants, who are generously sharing here. Welcome to PW.

Truth is that if a page is worthy of a meta description you should write one not regurgitate existing content. It is a waste of cpu and your time as the SE's are more than capable of determining what to show based on users search terms and page content. Think of the meta description as a way for you to speak to the searcher since in effect you are when the meta description is shown in the SERPS versus the engines algorithm determining that for you. Tell the user what they will find if they visit. You will be rewarded with increased conversions and that will increase your overall ranking in the algorithm.

@ryan - Thanks for this. I was just cruising the code and noticed you used foundation css and was just in the process of coding the menu for a new site (migration from MODx Evo) using foundation. I now owe you a $drink = "Payment for ./blog/topnav.php"; . We will give your PW Blog profile a spin over here. Looks nice. Quick question? How would you approach adding a blog section to en existing PW install using this?

I will be testing a cloudflare pro feature that serves up images based on the device type from the proxy/cdn versus trying to address it on the backend for now. Might save me some dev time for a low budget site. Here is a good resource - Responsive Images Community Group @W3 in case your interested. [EDIT] - Corrected broken link.

Well the great thing about PW is your driving the output. Look at your template. It can pull content in from anywhere via the API. You can add whatever fields to a template you need, then write the logic using standard PHP and the easy to leverage PW API. So rendering could be simple or more complex based on your business needs. Sometimes the hardest part a flexible framework is deciding what your logic needs to be rather than implementing it. Look at code examples sprinkled through the forums and the API and PW will start to shine before your eyes.

Just add the fields you need to the block template and use selectors to filter the items as you see fit.

Has anyone looked at simply employing a tinymce plugin for video? There are quite a few available. I am currently building out a site with video but am just using the repeater field with a simple textarea to hold the video embed. I have no need to show the video in the body content so have not explored this yet.

The less complicated solution to this problem is to use javascript and hook into the system on before save (not familiar with PW internals yet). MODx approached this in the evolution build with a module that used a simple text config file which could have field by field options by template in the backend, such as required or even replacing the label text. Worked well for the intended purpose of "helping" publisher/editors. I will need to dig deeper into the backend to see what's available.

I have a site using it (cloudflare) and in the last 30 days It saved about 70% of my bandwidth normally used on my VPS (with most big files already S3) and it cut the load on the server by about 50%. I have articles that get picked up by other sites and spikes in traffic so that was another win. Another nice feature is it blocks the most of the scrapers that would hammer the server to steal the content. That site gets about 10k users a day and the speed has really picked up and lowered the response time considerably. So far very impressed. Saves me from upgrading the VPS and plus It was a freebie offering from hosting provider that site is on, so I jumped on it. I think they give it away free to get the analytics on the traffic. But that is a better deal for me than Google analytics getting it all since the user does not benefit from that, now do they (just "better targeted ads").

Inline Editing. What fun that is. Adobe took their standalone inContext editor ( an inline) and added it to their Business Catalyst hosted offering. Developers can add attributes to the code (a div with a proprietary tag) that would be recognized by the inContext editor, to restrict the features of that editors use of it. That can certainly help to control the mayhem. But there is lots of that with inline. Plus I hate to see proprietary elements added to html but you usually do need someway to control the users editing scope. For the most part, my experience with end users has been that they need a simple structured way to submit content types that followed repeatable patterns while having some latitude within the "textarea" to add media elements and such. A focused backend serves that purpose. So I don't pine for it as a feature in a CMS. What I do like is the ability to control the presentation of the data entry process. PW has those features with the exemption of required data entry on fields (or am I missing that?). +1 for the repeatable fields. In summary aside from the "wow factor" I feel inline editing is overrated and when available, underutilized. Besides in a few years 60+% of users will be mobile or tablets anyway. Apps rule that space today and will in the future. That means more structure. We will have to create our interfaces to serve the users on the tools they will be using not the ones we do. I am not planning on giving up my keyboard. In fact you can pry my keyboard from my cold dead hands. Or maybe my keyboard will be the surface of the desk while a kinetic or similar device is reading my finger movements in 3D. Ahh what a wonderful time to be an interface / app developer!

If you need a quick affordable and PCI compliant solution to plug a cart into Processwire you might want to take a look at Foxycart.com. It is a javascript based cart (obviously requires javascript client side)that you can plug into anything trivially. It's well thought out. Lots of options. Nothing to maintain. What's nice is being free to turn any page anywhere in your site into a product. Used it with Modx sites without a hitch.

@ryan - Totally understand. Just thought there might be an issue that needed to be worked on.

@ryan - Thank you for the information. As I progress with this I will provide feedback on my outcome.

Question - Is there a particular reason the TinyMCE is back at 3.4.7 in the current release and not current (3.5.1.1)? I updated the module to use 3.5.1.1 it on my local install and added codemagic and every thing appears to be fine from my experience over the last couple of days. We build HTML5 sites and I was looking for better support in the editor, thus the update.

This was one of the resources that as soon as I looked at it, it kicked me from a looker to a doer with PW. Fantastic resource Soma. Thanks. I have worked with many CMS's and clarity (good clean documentation) is a very crucial aspect to get people involved and to stay with a project. I give 5 out of 5 stars to PW for this. I look forward to helping where I can.

Thanks for the welcomes. @diago - I will look into this as an option. I want something that would make sense for content editors and would be easy to deploy, but Soma's approach would be logical if I was in a rush. Just exploring the idea and getting familiar with the API.

Maybe a redmine (redmine.org) install with each module as a project would save a bundle of time. Then each module could have a wiki, forum, downloads, repo, news, issues, etc. Forums are such a poor choice for this. I might be up for providing hosting or a contribution.

Found PW through a tweet! Was looking for a clean and streamlined CMS to migrate MODx evolution sites from as the dev team replaced it with Revolution which was too big and heavy for smaller marketing sites IMHO. I have deployed sites on Drupal, MODx, EE, Pyro CMS and can tell you that for many of the types of sites we build, PW is a better match. Currently converting a +150 page site over now and scoping a few more.

Hi All, I am wondering if it would it be possible to use the new language features in 2.2 to create different versions of content for mobile devices and tablets. Detect on the front end and redirect to the right "language". That way you could have content optimized for device groups. I know Adobe has taken this approach with there BC platform. I have not looked in to the language features yet as I am new to PW and just getting my feet wet. @Ryan - Fantastic project. Excellent documentation. Impressive forum participation. Wow. I usually build highly structured sites and PW fits that like a glove plus it looks like a winner for marketing sites / landing pages. Impressed and thankful. Cheers.