Weekly update – 31 May 2024

[ryan]

This week the core dev branch version remains at 3.0.239 but relative to last week, it contains several optimizations and improvements. Details can be found in the dev branch commit log. I've also moved two Textformatter modules out of ProFields and into GitHub and the modules directory. These include: 

Auto Links
This Textformatter module automatically links your specified phrases/words to your specified URLs. This is a potential SEO and accessibility tool for creating automatic contextual links with little effort. If there are pages that you commonly link to in your site from your textarea/rich text fields, then this Textformatter can save you some effort, automatically linking to those URLs.

Text Blocks
This Textformatter module enables you to assign a name to any block/region of text in a Textarea field. They are defined by typing start_name where you want the block to start, and stop_name where you want the block to stop. The block(s) of text can then be shown in any other Textarea field at runtime (site-wide) simply by typing the block name on its own line in the format show_name. Note that the word "name" in all of these examples would be whatever you've decided to name the block.

Both modules have been updated just for public release with a new version. Both are considered Stable, as they have both been running without incident for several years. 

These modules were moved from ProFields to the public modules directory for three reasons. First is that they don't consume hardly any support resources, so they don't need to be commercially supported modules anymore. Second is that I'd like to keep ProFields focused more on field related modules (Fieldtype, Inputfield, and related) rather than Textformatter modules. Though admittedly the TextBlocks module does blur the line a bit, as it promotes potential greater reusability with existing Textarea/TinyMCE/CKEditor fields. Third is that there's already a lot in ProFields and I wanted to make room for new modules, such as the recently added PageEditChildren, which is part of ProFields at least in the short term.

The FunctionalFields module may come out of ProFields well, as it hasn't required much in terms of support resources recently, though it is a useful Fieldtype/Inputfield module that is very much in keeping with the theme of ProFields, so I'm still debating on that one. Thanks for reading and have a great weekend!

[Ivan Gretsky]

Thanks for this @ryan! Great to see something becoming free in the days that so many simple things tend to become paid on the contrary.

The ProFields  pack is still clearly a must have and worth its money for sure)