Introduction

It's beginning to look a lot like Craft 3
It’s almost time. Craft 3 RC1 is scheduled for release on December 5, 2017. If that was on your wish list, you're in luck. (If you’re wondering what RC1 actually means, see Software release life cycle later in the issue.)
CLL #53 is filled with Craft CMS goodies, including fresh details on the Plugin store, loads of plugins, and plenty of dev tips. Find something you like? Give the author a shout out on Twitter or a star on Github.
A big thank you to fortrabbit for sponsoring this issue. If you're looking for Craft hosting you've found it.
Let's hit the links.
-John Morton
News
Craft 3 beta 36 released
Craft 3 beta 35 was quickly followed by beta 36. Check out the change log for the details.
Plugin Store FAQ Updated ⭐️
There's been a lot of discussion about the upcoming plugin store in Slack. That discussion is now collected in the official Plugin Store FAQ. Whether you're planning on developing a plugin or just installing one, be sure to check out the updates here.
Featured Sponsor

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Tools, tips, and fundamentals
Hashing Redirects in Craft ⭐️
Are your forms not submitting as you expect in Craft 3? Ryan will show you what's going on and how to fix it by hashing your redirect parameter, the default behavior in Craft 3 for form submission.
Craft 3 Service APIs in Templates ⭐️
Mijingo on Craft 3 Service APIs in Templates. After watching this video you’ll have a better understanding of why craft.app
is showing up so much in your Craft 3 templates.
Craft CMS Class Reference
Craft 3 now has a full class reference. This is a good followup link to the Craft 3 Service APIs video.
Run Inspection by Name in PHPStorm ⭐️
If you’re a plugin developer working on Craft 2 -> Craft 3 plugins, this will save you tons of time.
SEO Reporting Software by AgencyAnalytics
SEO, PPC, social and analytics dashboard that impresses clients and saves time.
WooRank.com | SEO Checker
From SEO to Digital Marketing, use WooRank to analyze and optimize unlimited websites.
Project management tools
There was a project management discussion in Slack last week about what services people use to keep team members on the same page. Here are some of the suggestions mentioned:
- Twist – Mindful Team Communication
- Ora – Agile task management & team collaboration.
- Cage - Cage is project management and media collaboration rethought.
- Freedcamp - All the tools you need to be successful in one place
- Wrike - Cloud-based collaboration and project management software that scales across teams in any business.
Perfecting your technique
How to convert a Craft 2 plugin’s changelog to Craft 3 format. ⭐️
Craft 3 plugins should include a changelog named CHANGELOG.md, rather than a releases.json file (see Changelogs and Updates).
If you have an existing releases.json file, you can quickly convert it to a changelog using the following command in your terminal:
cd path/to/plugin curl https://api.craftcms.com/v1/utils/releases-2-changelog --data-binary @releases.json > CHANGELOG.md
Sponsor

Pic Puller: The Instagram plugin for Craft CMS
Pic Puller brings your Instagram media into Craft CMS with one-click authorization for your users. Full documentation and code samples get you up and running quickly. Craft 3 version is coming soon. Learn more.
Plugged In
CookiePass
Provides a basic password only "login" that allows you to hide content from the general public.
HTTP2 Server Push ⭐️
Automatically add HTTP2 Link headers for CSS, JS and image assets. If you're interested in this plugin, also check out HTTP/2 push is tougher than I thought.
CMS Speedup ⭐️
This plugin has been built to follow the recommendations made in the Speeding Up the Craft CMS Admin Dashboard article by Zachary Flower and also address the issue of what happens after the CMS is updated.
The Craft Advantage
It’s not Craft, but it’s interesting.
Software release life cycle ⭐️
So you know by now that Craft 3 is in beta and will soon have an RC, but what exactly do those terms mean? This Wikipedia article on the Software release life cycle explains it.
Videos from All Things Open conference 2017
A conference exploring open source, open tech, and the open web in the enterprise.
How to use the du command
Ever need to know how big a folder/directory is from the command line? Try du -sh /path/to/folder/*
. Now we both know.
CSS Grid Layout with @support flexbox fallback
Example of CSS Grid Layout using grid-areas through three different media queries to make it responsive.
Yii 2 Elasticsearch extension
This extension provides the elasticsearch integration for the Yii framework 2.0. It includes basic querying/search support and also implements the ActiveRecord pattern that allows you to store active records in elasticsearch.
Httpie
Modern command line HTTP client – user-friendly curl alternative with intuitive UI, JSON support, syntax highlighting, wget-like downloads, extensions, etc.