Introduction

Craft efficiently and carry on.
It's year 2 for Craft Link List and the newsletter continues to grow. Subscribers numbers are increasing and so is the length of each issue. I hear your feedback: CLL is a long newsletter, maybe too long! I'm working on that by trying to be more selective on what makes its way into each issue.
On the other hand, as I wrap up each issue I wonder what content will be in the next issue. I don't write the content behind each link. The Craft community does. So thank you for the plugins, the articles, the tips that all of you create. This issue is another smorgasbord of Craft CMS links. I hope you enjoy it.
Please welcome a new sponsor, ShipRush. If you're using Craft Commerce and have goods to ship, you should know about ShipRush. Check them out.
Let's hit the links.
Top Stories
Craftini 2016 tickets
This is "the conference for Crafters" and tickets for this event are now available. This online conference will be held on August 5, 2016.
News
Craft 2.6.2791 fix for security vulnerability.
Craft CMS 2.6.2791 fixed a security vulnerability for sites with public registration. If that affects your site, one-click update, FTW.
Craft Commerce Updates
What's in this update? Improvement and bug fixes including the new "Per Email Address Limit condition to coupon-based discounts, which will limit the coupons’ use by email address."
Featured Sponsor

ShipRush for Craft Commerce
Let ShipRush take the hassle out of shipping! Print shipping labels and update your Craft orders with only a few clicks, no copy/paste required. ShipRush also handles email notifications, printing packing lists, managing orders and more, all automagically.
Tools, tips, and fundamentals
The Craft Podcast: Website Performance Part II
Obviously, this "part 2" is a follow up episode to "part 1". I listened to that initial episode at least 3 times. It was chocked full of great information and is highly recommended if you haven't heard it yet. Want more? Give part 2 a listen.
Vanity URLs in Craft CMS
Prateek Rungta wrestles with template paths and routes for a solution to "vanity" URLs that won't break your site.
Perfecting your technique
Code Review: Optimized Tag Clouds with Taggregate
In this Straight Up Hangout Matt Stein offers up his Taggregate plugin for dissection. Brave! Also check this Stack Exchange post related to the discussion that develops.
Platform Agnostic Add-on Dev
CTRL+CLICK CAST #1: Eric Lamb, aka the person behind Backup Pro, was the guest on this episode.
Connecting to 3rd Party APIs
CTRL+CLICK CAST #2: Mitchell Kimbrough, aka the person behind Solspace, was the guest on this episode.
Real Estate Listings with Craft CMS and Rets Rabbit
Rets Rabbit is a real estate listings Web API. This article shows how to use it with the Craft CMS OAuth & REST plugins from Dukt.
The Definitive Guide to Validation in Craft, Part 1
These 2 validation posts accompany the The Definitive Guide to Craft Validation for Plugin Developers ebook mentioned in an early issue of CLL.
Plugged In
Craft Plugin Development Workbook
This is a follow-up to the Craft Plugin Development course, mentioned several months ago, "which is a prerequisite" for this new course.
The first course was very good and I can vouch for its quality. I expect the same level of quality for the new one.
Webmention for Craft CMS
This Craft CMS plugin implements a Webmention endpoint, a simple way to notify any URL when you link to it on your site.
Craft HTTP Messages
A Craft CMS plugin for creating PSR-7 request and response objects. (Just between you and me, I have no idea what that means.)

Twig Usort
Implements uSort into Twig, like this...
{% set entries = craft.entries.section(catEntries').find() | twigUsort( 'catField', '["Abyssinian","Tabby","Siamese"]' ) %}
Placid
Placid is a Craft plugin which makes it easy to consume REST services in your Twig templates.
CraftCMS Dev Images
A widget to generate lightweight images for missing image assets. Useful when your local Craft build doesn't have all the image assets that your live build does.
The Architect - formerly known as "CraftCMS Generator"
If this plugin sounds familiar, your flashbacks are serving you well. This is the CraftCMS Generator, mentioned in the May 1 issue, with a new name and some design TLC.
Craft CMS Shortcodes
This is a port of Wordpress shortcode functions for Craft CMS. This plugin allows you to register shortcode callbacks in your own custom plugins.
If you're interested in this sort of functionality, you can also check out a couple other plugins tackling this issue both which have been mentioned in earlier issues of the newsletter, Embedded assets for Craft and Videos.
The Craft Advantage
Nook Sleep Systems - Craft Commerce Case Study
Zaengle Corp shares their Craft Commerce experience. Thank you!
Compare Symfony CMF vs. Craft CMS
This came through the Craft Slack channel recent. Although this comparison chart is a bit " apples/oranges comparison", it's mention of the "main disadvantage" of Craft is that its coding style "is a bit old school PHP." Regarding this point, that's probably a reference to Craft's use of Yii, version 1, which will be a moot point when Yii2 is implemented in Craft 3.
Yii, Twig, PHP & More
Twig Documentation: batch
Twig has so many "goodies" hidden in plain site, like the batch filter. "The batch filter "batches" items by returning a list of lists with the given number of items. A second parameter can be provided and used to fill in missing items."
Twig Documentation: divisible by
Earlier this month in Slack, someone posted "I need to add some classes (to an li
) and I’m working on writing those classes into my forloop
. I need to check if the number is 2,5,8,11,14 and so on. I’d love to check if the number is a multiple of 3 - 1. Is there a way I can do that with twig?" Yes, you can.