ProcessWire Recipes

[marcus]

Often times, creating a side project is first and foremost scratching your own itch

Or to start differently: Currently, I'm developing a site where I need CKeditor (and later jQueryUI Datepicker) outside of the admin, in frontend. I searched Google and the forums and found an approach to follow - but during the research the site laravel-recipes.com came into my mind (since I'm currently also looking into this framework). It's content consists of small, spot-on bits of information, for example: http://laravel-recipes.com/recipes/269

Just to think out loudly here, wouldn't it be nice to have a ProcessWire counterpart of such a site? processwire-recipes.com for example?

• Target group: Developers, from beginner to advanced
• Difference to these forums: Stripping the discussion part, concentrating on the info; and if done properly: bypassing the mediocre forum search, better tagging
• Difference to the official tutorial section: Focusing on not creating a whole site, but modular parts of it. Single solutions. For example: First child redirects (shameless plug, but this is the format of information pieces I'm having in mind)
• Difference to the API documentation: Situation-based ("I need this and that") instead of architecture-based

Laravel.io (forum), laravel.com (official, and doc) and laravel-recipies.com possibly prove that these type of sites can coexist in a framework ecosystem, so I guess a recipes site would not cannibalize this forum here nor the doc section.

A recipe site like this would live and die with its content, of course. I would be ready to share all the small pieces of information I encounter that would make a good "recipe". But that alone wouldn't be enough  so this project won't survive without contribution of the community.

What's your opinion on this? Yea or nay?

Update: ...it just took, erm, nearly three months,... but here it is: https://processwire-recipes.com/

Edited December 5, 2014 by marcus

[mr-fan]

don't miss this one: https://processwire.com/talk/topic/7565-making-pw-more-userfriendly/page-2#entry72937

i think we should talk to nico......and make it happen like http://processwire.tv/

i'll contributing in the "beginner" section

[SiNNuT]

I quite like this idea.

[marcus]

don't miss this one: https://processwire.com/talk/topic/7565-making-pw-more-userfriendly/page-2#entry72937

i think we should talk to nico......and make it happen like http://processwire.tv/

i'll contributing in the "beginner" section 

 

Oh, thanks for the pointer. Totally missed this thread because I haven't found the time to look into the forums for a while I haven't yet caught up with all developments, infos, ideas - which are kind of fast-paced lately

[mr-fan]

yes indeed and a hanna code section would be great....i love these little snippets for manipulating/generating content....

let's wait for nico - if he had a second for this (i think he's always bussy )

[GuruMeditation]

I don't know if any of you are aware of Bolt CMS, but it reminds me a lot of PW. I've tested it a few times, but I prefer PW. Anyway, they have a snippets section which I found useful.

https://snippets.bolt.cm/

I assume the OP is referring to something along those lines?

If so, it gets a +1 from me.

[marcus]

I don't know if any of you are aware of Bolt CMS, but it reminds me a lot of PW. I've tested it a few times, but I prefer PW. Anyway, they have a snippets section which I found useful.

https://snippets.bolt.cm/

I assume the OP is referring to something along those lines?

If so, it gets a +1 from me.

Yep, thats more or less what I had in mind. Format-wise and compared to the Bolt snippets, I would propose to add more context, since I like the trio "Problem - Solution - Discussion" (see laravel recipes example above). But their tagging is perfect.

[OrganizedFellow]

SUPERBULOUS IDEA!

LOVE IT.

Where do I sign up?

[marcus]

Without intentional searching, I stumbled upon some snippets that would be adequate recipes - if tagged well and accompanied with a short description of problem and solution:

• https://processwire.com/talk/topic/5578-how-to-use-fancybox/?p=73141
• https://processwire.com/talk/topic/7167-server-error-with-latest-dev-build/#entry69041
• https://processwire.com/talk/topic/7573-best-way-to-implement-a-global-utility-function/#entry73157
• https://processwire.com/talk/topic/3779-use-csrf-in-your-own-forms/

Just to add more examples to my idea of processwire-recipes.

Since community attribution would be crucial for such a project, it's also a matter of pragmatism to keep recipes short. The easier it is to contribute the bigger the chances are that anyone does.

To not create a parallel structures but to join forces on this topic, Nico and I spoke yesterday and we learned that our approaches differ slightly. We decided to present these both - and are eager to hear your feedback on them. To keep things simple Nico will shortly present the state of his snippets.pw idea so far in this very topic. What connects us nevertheless is the feel that there is need for such a "PW knowledge hub" page.

 

[Ivan Gretsky]

This is a great idea and has been popping up a few times. I thought about similar thing myself and even found it implemented. It is not quite the same as proposed by Marcus, but with the same intent - bring up all the usefull things from the depths of forum topics.

I would really love to see this one get done, so I'll try to point out what I think is needed for success, and that is broad and continous participation from the expert group of this forum. I think that this can be best achieved if this functionality becomes part of the official PW site. People come and sometimes go but the collective wisdom should stay.

It should be really easy to post new recipies to this "recipe-book". Maybe a good thing is to add links to the corresponding forum threads. But maybe the most important thing for it is to be used, so it won't die like wiki. I think newcommers should be encouraged through links in forum answers. The existence of this recipe-book could drastically ease the "noob-question answering process".

The other things to consider:

- good thought out structure

- good search (if we integrate that thing into PW site it is possible to have one search box for both the forums and the recipies)

[Nico Knoll]

Well my idea for snippets.pw was including two different types of "posts": "snippets" and "receipts".

Snippets:

Snippets would be really short code blocks including maybe 1-2 descriptive lines and inline comments. But mostly the pure code.

Receipts:

Receipts would be a little more advanced. They would first explain which "ingredients" (fields, templates) are needed. Then show the code with more description. At the end you would see the results as screenshots or as html code. So this post type is more like a tutorial.

---

After talking to LostKobrakai and marcus about this it appeared that they had slightly different ideas about this. But I think I would be fine whatever way we go as long as something helpful emerges. And as long as I can put my 2 cents in

[LostKobrakai]

I'm happy if I can contribute to some sort of snippet library and I like the two kind strategy because it fits the "hey I found a cool piece of code" mentality and also the stuff that just needs a little more explanation. 

[OrganizedFellow]

On a semi-related note:

Where does everyone currently keep their snippets?

I found this a few months ago, been using it for ProcessWire snippets, commands for git, linux, etc. and other tidbits.

http://www.gistboxapp.com/

[marcus]

On a semi-related note:

Where does everyone currently keep their snippets?

I found this a few months ago, been using it for ProcessWire snippets, commands for git, linux, etc. and other tidbits.

http://www.gistboxapp.com/

Usually as gists on GitHub (why aren't they calling this part of their site "GistHub"? Would be my kind of humor), but until now the "normal" way. But this gistbox app looks very useful as a better interface for this, thanks for the hint! Although I find the Chrome extension somehow "aggressive" when it comes to "hooking" into website rendering. But it is just an option, anyway.

Hopefully there is more feedback coming in on the two approaches over the next days Otherwise I'd like to propose a prototype phase with both definitions of recipes parallelly.

[remove]

I believe that a Snippets page only works when it is part of PW. Directly under the download button

Download

• Plugin Modules
• Snippets
• Admin Themes
• Language Packs
• Site Profiles

When it is part of PW users will be more likely to use it and thrust the code to use. It is the first place that I would look when I want to add functionality to my website. PW needs functionalities, otherwise why implement a CMS at all! A CMS brings functionality.

[yellowled]

PW needs functionalities, otherwise why implement a CMS at all! A CMS brings functionality.

Not necessarily. A CMS can just give you the tools to implement functionality, it doesn't necessarily have to hand you the functionality on a silver platter. See Ryan's excellent statement on the whole “teach you how to fish” thing.

[kongondo]

Not necessarily. A CMS can just give you the tools to implement functionality, it doesn't necessarily have to hand you the functionality on a silver platter. See Ryan's excellent statement on the whole “teach you how to fish” thing.

Interesting...I provided a similar answer to toothpaste in this other post

[yellowled]

Interesting...I provided a similar answer to toothpaste in this other post

Yeah, I kind of read that only after posting this here. Oh boy, duplicate content! 

[NooseLadder]

I like this idea. It's ok searching the forum but sometimes you just can't find what you need, you know it out there, but where? So, a more direct/focussed search would be good (and hopefully a time saver as well)

[mr-fan]

Maybe a section for HannaCode would be great, too!

This is something that is hidden in many threats, too like snippets....

HannaCode + some little instructions

regards mr-fan

[marcus]

Obviously I haven't yet really found the time to work further on this - client work - but I found at least some time collecting bits of information that would be good recipes imho (within a "problem <-> solution" structure, of course): https://github.com/processwire-recipes/concept.

And I wrote a few lines to nico to kindle things seconds ago. So do not fear that this project is already dead

[mr-fan]

just forked it and added some recipes....later i will add more and separate them in tags/groups

https://github.com/mr-fan/concept

i think a tag sorting would make sense here, too and some more sorting.....since we wanna better/faster availability for the snippets like in this forum.....so only date and alphabetical wouldn't be enough?

But the basic concept is quite easy and easy usually the best equal for beginners or pros....

[marcus]

i think a tag sorting would make sense here, too and some more sorting.....

I guess two kinds of sortings for recipes could be useful:

• Tags/Keywords (like Bolt snippets: e.g. https://snippets.bolt.cm/s/gsudt)
• A greater narrative, recipes grouped together into e.g. dealing with core modules, building a multilanguage site, wrangling media and so on. Inspired by the table of contents of http://laravel-recipes.com/contents

[mr-fan]

Yeah i like this TOC from laravel! This kind of sorting give a fast access for different topics.

And tags for more detailed search/find things with tags like "gallery", "login", "save", "pagetree", "images", "module", "user".....

nico's minds would be great since he has the right domain for stuff like this....

[OrganizedFellow]

Resurrecting a brilliant topic.