more questions, modules etc

[Martinus]

Hi all,

Recently I am browsing through the forum and download section. The download section Modules is not really clear to me. 

1. Old modules, from 2014, 2015, etc - are they still valid or has time and updates of the core left them behind?  
2. I am interested in dynamic selects and I looked at a module from @kongondo in some topic, which is very nice by the way. But, in the download section I could not find it under Pro. Anyway, it was not really clear to me what the benefits were comparing it to the parent=page.something you had to put in a value field somewhere (old post), while Ryan said in an update post all was good now, but still no documentation can be found at this moment. Is it in the core then? Very confusing.

Another example, I am looking for a admin theme to use so I can see which field is attached to which page (in columns) but I am afraid to just install anything that slightly resembles what i am looking for. After all, it always says 'at your own risk' and some are just really old. I am spending a large amount of time reading what can be found per module but I am also exhausted because, what am I looking for exactly?

I hope I am not offending anyone with these remarks but it would be nice to know where PW stands?

[gornycreative]

There are a number of older modules that still work just fine, generally speaking there is generally not a lot of compatibility breaking upgrade during the core upgrade cycle. It's also not necessary to upgrade to the latest and greatest dev version - there is always a stable release channel and a development channel - which channel you choose to put in production is ultimately up to you.

Kongondo has stuff on his own site.

https://processwireshop.pw/plugins/dynamic-selects/

When you view the fields list, it shows you how many pages use that field and clicking that number will give you a list.

You can also get lister pro which allows you to create remembered custom lists based on any number of criteria, including selectors to check if a field is filled out or empty.

For your purposes of analyzing field use, this is one I'd definitely recommend - it is also possible to edit value within a lister.

https://processwire.com/store/lister-pro/

There is a version of Lister included in core but it doesn't have the ability to remember/save listers as pages or edit-in-place.

 

[teppo]

51 minutes ago, Martinus said:

Old modules, from 2014, 2015, etc - are they still valid or has time and updates of the core left them behind?

Was a bit slow to answer, so @gornycreative pretty much covered this already, but just to be clear: in my experience most of them are still valid. Potential exceptions may, for an example, include modules that for some reason rely heavily on a certain admin theme.

Overall there have been very few breaking changes in the core through the years, so most — probably close to all — modules that worked for 3.0 (or even 2.x versions) still work today, some may just look a bit off. Or there may be a core feature nowadays that solves a similar need without a need for third party module 🙂

One thing worth keeping in mind is thatolder modules typically don't have/use the ProcessWire namespace, which means that you'll have to keep FileCompiler enabled for modules. This is the case by default, so not a problem unless you've intentionally disabled $config->moduleCompile via site/config.php.

51 minutes ago, Martinus said:

Another example, I am looking for a admin theme to use so I can see which field is attached to which page (in columns) but I am afraid to just install anything that slightly resembles what i am looking for. After all, it always says 'at your own risk' and some are just really old. I am spending a large amount of time reading what can be found per module but I am also exhausted because, what am I looking for exactly?

I must admit that this confused me a bit. If you're just looking to see which field is attached to which page, that doesn't sound like a reason to switch entire admin theme. Admin themes are generally more about the look and feel of the admin, not so much about the features included, while this sounds like a rather specific feature. I can't remember if I've seen exactly this type of list myself; fields are connected to templates, so usually you'd want to see which templates a field belongs to or which pages use a specific template, rather than which pages use a specific field 🙂

If you're interested which fields have a value in specific field, then that's a different story. You can use the built-in pages find feature to list pages where that field is not empty:

Also, as a general rule of thumb — and this is definitely more than a bit opinionated — I wouldn't recommend installing new admin themes unless you know what you're doing. While admin themes can be changed, and third party admin themes may work perfectly fine, generally speaking admin features are most likely to work best with the default (Uikit) admin theme.

Then again, "at your own risk" is often just something developers say when they put stuff out there. It doesn't necessarily mean that something is broken — just that there's no guarantee that it will, and also no warranty in case it doesn't work 🙂

51 minutes ago, Martinus said:

I hope I am not offending anyone with these remarks but it would be nice to know where PW stands?

Don't worry, asking questions is A-OK 🙂