Craft Link List (Archive)

Introduction

A grab-bag of Craft CMS tips, tweets, and plugins

Hello Craft friends. Welcome to a "classic" CLL issue: a bunch of links that will hopefully interest a Craft developer. I hope you find something to pique your interest.

The top story is about an in-development rich-text field from the Craft team based on Editor.js. The most intriguing part of this news is the discussion that it generated on Discord, which included a hint that in the future, Matrix might be a standalone plugin.

Thank you to the sponsors of this issue.

Webperf monitors your Craft site's performance based on its actual users and their devices. It shows you the results and offers suggestions on improving on the issues it finds.

Freeform is the feature-filled form plugin for Craft CMS that includes ready-to-use templates to get you up and running quickly. Learn about the power of Freeform.

If you have a link to share, head over to the submit a link page. It helps with putting each issue together.

Let's hit the links.

-John Morton

News

Craft CMS 3.4.20 released

As of 3.4.19, the web-based Craft installer now defaults the database server to 127.0.0.1 instead of localhost.

3.4.20 removed the random delay for successful login attempts. The randomized delay now only applies to failed login attempts. What going on there? A randomized delay is a deterrent to brute force attacks on the control panel, but it's not needed for successful logins.

London Craft CMS Meetup #8 | Virtual Meetup ⭐️

Ben Croker will be holding a talk on Templating for Performance in Craft. Since the meet up is virtual, you don't have to be in London to join. Sign up and I’ll see you there.

Commerce 3.1.4

Commerce now has a “Duplicate” action to the Products index page. Edit Order pages now link to the customer’s edit page. See the full changelog for more details.

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Tools, tips, and fundamentals

Using 'template_from_string' in Twig templates 🧙‍♂️

Andrew tweeted a tip on using dynamic variables in your rich content using Twig's template_from_string() function.

Why CDN?

We all aspire to fast sites. This Tweet from Ben Croker lays out the numbers on why a CDN is a part of that equation.

Problem with a plugin? There's help.

If you run into an issue with a Craft plugin and need to reach Craft HQ for help, scroll down to the Information area on the plugin's page in the store. You'll find a Report an issue link on every Craft plugin page.

SuperGeekery: Adding Date Validation Logic when Creating an Event in Craft CMS 3

I wrote a quick post on adding date validation and tweaking the AX in Craft CMS 3 when using the built-in Date/Time fields.

Perfecting your technique

Podcast: ProPublica - Cache It!

Mitchell Kimbrough from Solspace talks with Mike Tigas and Frank Sharpe from ProPublica about their Craft CMS powered site, hosted on AWS, and cached on Cloudflare. The podcast cast continues in a second episode.

Placing a Craft CMS application behind AWS CloudFront

Justyna Jurkowska from 8th Light discusses setting up a Craft site on AWS and using CloudFront.

(Editorial gripe: I wish CloudFront and Cloudflare didn’t have such similar names. I expect Cloud Flant to launch soon.)

Craft CMS 3 local development with Lando Docker - EaglePeak Consulting

Alex Aguilar has updated his post, mentioned previously in issue 99, on developing Craft using Lando Docker, which provides an abstraction layer on top of Docker.

I see references to the new DB_DSN key, which is replacing the older DB_DRIVER, DB_SERVER, DB_DATABASE, and DB_PORT keys Craft used to use. There's also a video walk-through with chapter stops.

Styling Redactor Output with Retcon (and Tailwind)

In this 5-minute video, Jake Dohm shows how to use the Retcon plugin in Craft to style your Redactor text fields.

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Plugged In

SS User Import Export

This plugin lets you import new users via CSV and offers a variety of export options.

Sentry Log Target

Sentry Log Target catches exceptions natively with Yii2's log component and sends them to Sentry.

Zoom

This plugins enables user to utilize Zoom video conferencing to their website. It provides facilities to embed zoom meeting into website.

Money Fieldtype for CraftCMS v3

Money is a custom fieldtype and formatter by Levi Graham from Newism that uses the moneyphp/money library.

Craft DB Extract

This plugin makes a web controller action available to pull the database export.

Craft Elements Panel ⭐️

Adds an elements panel to the debug toolbar.

Check out 👀 this feature:

Warns you if opportunities for eager-loading elements are detected. Displays how many queries were executed (that could be eager-loaded) and how many are duplicates, grouped by field name.

The plugin will probably be discussed during Ben Croker's presentation at the London Meetup mentioned in the news sections.

Weglot Integration

This plugin provides to switch language easily via Weglot. Weglot translates automatically instead of you.

Image Hotspots

Use the Image Hotspots fieldtype to add multiple hotspots to images from a Matrix or Super Table in Craft CMS.

Socializer

Engage website visitors and customers on a social level with social login or sign-up. Extend to social sharing, user profiles, friends lists, activities streams, status updates, and more.