Craft Link List (Archive)

Introduction

What's in store for the plugin store.

May 10 was a big news day in Craft 3 land. Pixel & Tonic shared news on the WIP version of the Craft 3 Plugin Store and then followed up with a community hangout hosted by CraftX. Be sure to check out the 3 links in the Top Stories section. You'll want to get comfortable. There is a lot there.

That's not all that's in this issue. There was a lot of talk about what code editors a couple weeks ago. You'll find an abundance of Visual Studio Code links in this issue to check out.

Welcome Solspace back to Craft Link List. If you've got a form to make, they'd like to help you out. (Thank you, Solspace!)

Let's hit the links.

-John Morton

News

Craft 3 Beta 17

There were 3 releases of the Craft 3 beta in short order before this issue went out.

Featured Sponsor

Solspace Freeform

Freeform is the most powerful form building plugin on the market for Craft. The intuitive live preview field layout editor gives you full control to create simple or complex multi-column and multi-page forms. It also includes flexible email notification options, powerful and flexible templating, and has options for several API integrations.

Tools, tips, and fundamentals

Craft CMS Docker for Craft 3 beta

For you Docker aficionados.

Twig Processing Order & Scope

Andrew continues to help make us better developers.

Perfecting your technique

Order Confirmation Email in Craft Commerce

Solution for Matrix-within-Matrix (or More Robust Table Fields)

Simple Static Asset Versioning in Craft CMS

Beer +1

Mobile Testing & Local Dev Sharing with Homestead

Beer +1

Building Complex Queries by Extending the ElementCriteriaModel

The Craft CMS official docs on working with elements are "still documenting all of the different features these classes have" making tutorials like this helpful to anyone making a plugin.

Bookmark this one.

A/B Split Testing with Nginx & Craft CMS

A/B testing is a way of life in development. Andrew has another excellent post on how to set this up in Craft.

WPO Stats

Case studies and experiments demonstrating the impact of web performance optimization (WPO) on user experience and business metrics.

Sponsor

Pic Puller: The Instagram plugin for Craft CMS

Pic Puller brings your Instagram media into Craft CMS. Full documentation and code samples get you up and running quickly.

Plugged In

Large Upload

Large Upload offers chunked uploading for large files, and uploads each file in tiny piece of 1MB at a time. Parallel uploads also makes it easier to maximise your current connection's upload speed.

Superbig has been on a tear with making a load of plugins for Craft. If your clients like to upload really big files, be sure to check this one out.

Superbig - Airtable

Superbig brings relational data forms with Airtable to Craft with this plugin.

What's Airtable? "Airtable is a human-friendly database solution that makes it super easy to manage both simple and complex, relational data."

Sprout Email Plugin

Email marketing and email notifications plugin for Craft CMS.

Usergroups selection as checkboxes

Add usergroup selection to entries, categories or assets.

For example, you could prevent an entry from being shown to selected user groups from the entry creation page.

Craft Fetch

Craft CMS Twig Extension for file_get_contents(). Useful if you are trying to inline an SVG file, for example.

<figure class="c-icon">
  {{ fetch('http://foo.bar/illustration.svg') }}
</figure>

Craft Presto

Static file extension for the native Craft CMS cache.

Google Cloud Storage for Craft CMS

This plugin provides a Google Cloud Storage integration for Craft CMS 3 beta.

Filter Environment Variables plugin for Craft CMS

Replace environment variable strings in your Twig variables. For example you can do something like this:

{{ entry.favoritePage | envvar }}

Any matching environment variables defined in your config file will be parsed.

Slack Notifications

Send notifications to Slack when someone places an order, a entry is created, or something else happens in your Craft site.

Boris

Protect selected entries from being deleted. (Great idea.)

Faker

Allows you to use Faker to output random fake data in your templates.

 {% set faker = craft.faker.fake %}
<ul>
{% for i in 1..10 %}
    <li>{{ faker.name }}, living at: {{ faker.address }}. Profile picture: {{ faker.imageUrl(640, 450, 'people') }}</li>
{% endfor %}
</ul>

Discourse SSO

Superbig brings Discourse single-sign-on to Craft. BTW, Discourse is "open source discussion platform."

If you're in the market for a community service platform for your Craft site, while you check out Discourse, you may also want to take a look at Vanilla Forums as well. There is also a Craft plugin for Vanilla Forums, mentioned previously on December 15, 2016 in CLL, here.

The Craft Advantage

A Review of Craft Commerce & How to Get Started

Beyond WordPress: Choosing the Right CMS

Overheard

Anyone using #craftcms?

Another example of why the Craft CMS community is a great place to hang out.

How it can be?

Relatively painless.

Enact CMS

It’s not Craft, but it’s interesting.

Scrap your linear workflow. Try a content-first web strategy.

Up and running with Visual Studio Code plugins

Bryan Garrant discussed getting up and running with Visual Studio Code and mentioned a list of plugins and links. (Note: I'm not taking sides in the "editor of choice" wars. If your editor works for you, it works for you.).

Craft Twig
Twig Pack
IntelliSense for CSS (formerly known as HTML CSS Class Completion)
View in Browser
Debugger for Chrome
JSHint
Bower
Git History
Project Manager

Plus check out these getting started articles:

I skip the static mock software and do site prototypes using Jekyll and Tachyons. Then as decisions are made, I move those templates into whatever tech solution it is (if it’s more than just a content site).