Introduction
Lots of links for late February.
We've got another jam-packed issue of Craft Link List. Loads of tips, plugins and videos on how-to get up to speed with Craft 3. Whether you're new to Craft or already well-seasoned, you should find something interesting below.
Thank you to this issues sponsors.
Solspace has released Freeform 2 Beta, the form powertool for Craft 2 is now available for Craft 3. Sweet. (It's in your Craft 3 control panel plugin store.)
Peers Conference is coming up shortly in Austin. Get your ticket today and see your friends in April.
Let's hit the links.
-John Morton
Top Stories
Dot All: Do you have something to say?
Dot All is preparing for the next conference and has posted a request for speakers. Got something to say to the Craft community? Sign up here.
News
Craft 3 RC9, RC10, RC10.1 released
Lots of fixes, changes and updates since the previous issue of newsletter including default lightswitch values which was part of RC9.
Craft CMS 2.6.3009
And don't forget about Craft 2; it's still getting new features and updates. Check the changelog for details on what's new in 2.6.3009.
New year, new plugins
Verbb updated everyone on their plugins for Craft, including Super Table for Craft 3.
Featured Sponsor

Freeform 2 Beta now available for Craft 3!
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
Up and Running with Craft 3 video course ⭐️
Mijingo has launched the Craft 3 version so getting up to speed is easier than ever. It's $10 off at the time this issue publishes. Get it while it's hot.
PhpStorm plugin tip from @nystudio107 ⭐️
If you're using PhpStorm to develop a Craft CMS 3 plugin within a "host" site as discussed in the "So You Wanna Make a Craft 3 Plugin?" article, add the symlinked vendor/ directory repo to the project for the nice File Status Highlighting https://t.co/vwa1iGSF20 #craftcms #craft3 https://t.co/jjcMeuE6L3
The Craft Mindset from Mijingo
4 days, 4 lessons, free videos. It's the perfect start to working with Craft.
Building a Blog in Craft CMS - YouTube playlist
Ryan Irelan has done a couple free screencasts on getting Craft 3 installed and building a blog. These were originally live Twitch events but they're now archived at this playlist on YouTube.
Using Craft as a Contract Builder V2
Blue Fish Design has a short 4-minute video on how they use Craft to build client contracts. (Back in CLL #45, there was a link to v1 of this presentation. It was updated to v2 soon after that and it's just now making it here.)
Setting up a CraftCMS website and plugins with Composer
For anyone looking to make their Craft setup and plugin installation easier here’s an article on how to use Composer with Craft 2.
Timing Details With cURL – Joseph Scott
Personally, I had to edit the curl-format.txt
a bit, maybe because I'm on a Mac. This github repo has an example curl-format.txt
that works well with my Mac and also provides a few more details.
curl -w "@curl-format.txt" -o /dev/null -s https:/craftcms.com
Once you've got this set up, you can put the line above into your console and get the timing details of any site online.
Perfecting your technique
Running Craft CMS 2 on Laravel Valet
Jalen Davenport on Laravel Valet.
Fred also mentioned in Slack that "the default Craft driver only looks in the root directory + any locale folders that matches the predefined list of locale iso codes" at https://github.com/laravel/valet/blob/master/cli/drivers/CraftValetDriver.php#L56
. And that "if you want it to look for a custom folder, you have to copy the default and modify it in your project folder."
Custom Pinterest Descriptions in Craft CMS ⭐️
FortySeven Media has a nice post on getting the most out of your Pinterest post and how it integrates with Craft.
Multi-level Bootstrap 4 Navbar With Craft 3 (No Plugins)
Want to setup a Bootstrap 4 Navbar and use native functions in Craft 3 to manage the navigation menu? Here's your post.
Sponsor

Peers Conference 2018 – April 25-27 – Austin TX
Peers is a 3-day conference for web and software developers. Join us this spring in Austin for workshops on Craft 3, React, CSS Grid and more, along with sessions on web and mobile development, and running your business. There may be tacos. And B-B-Q. Did we mention our Food Ambassador…? Register today - register.peersconf.com
Plugged In
Craft Sentry
Integrate Craft with Sentry for error tracking that helps developers monitor and fix crashes in real time.
Enupal Snapshot
PDF or Image generation from a URL or HTML page easily. It uses the excellent webkit-based wkhtmltopdf available on OSX, Linux & windows.
Enupal Backup
Simplifies Backups for Craft CMS. Manual or scheduled your Backups and upload it securely to Amazon S3, Dropbox, Softlayer Object Storage and FTP/SFTP.
Craft 3 Admin Bar
Front-end shortcuts for clients logged into Craft CMS. With v3.1.0 this plugin allows you to provide information to the front-end with Admin Bar Widget. Nice!
Craft Scout
Craft Scout provides a simple solution for adding full-text search to your entries. Scout will automatically keep your search indexes in sync with your entries.
Social Poster
Automatically post your entries to social media channels when you publish your entries. Selectively post to different networks, or re-post on-demand to boost certain entries. Supports Facebook, Twitter and Linked.in, with developer support for additional third-party providers.
It’s not Craft, but it’s interesting.
devMode.fm // Google AMP: The Battle for the Internet's Soul?
The devMode crew discusses Google Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP), from the promise of fast loading pages to what you cede to Google when you use it.
Appointment Scheduling Services
A recent discussion of "calendar scheduling service" lead to this list.
Turbolinks
Turbolinks makes navigating your web application faster. Get the performance benefits of a single-page application without the added complexity of a client-side JavaScript framework. Use HTML to render your views on the server side and link to pages as usual.
flatpickr: Datetime picker
flatpickr is a lightweight and powerful datetime picker. Lean, UX-driven, and extensible, yet it doesn’t depend on any libraries. There’s minimal UI but many themes. Rich, exposed APIs and event system make it suitable for any environment.
About HTML semantics and front-end architecture
Nicolas Gallagher on "HTML semantics, components and approaches to front-end architecture, class naming patterns, and HTTP compression."
Full Stack Radio #81: Evan You - Advanced Vue Component Design
In this episode, Adam Wathan talks to Evan You the creator of Vue.js about advanced component design patterns, and using features like scoped slots and render functions to build components that are much more than just UI widgets.
A techie’s rough guide to GDPR by Cennydd Bowles
General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR) affects any company, wherever they are in the world, that handles data about European citizens. It becomes law on 25 May 2018.
In Web Design, Everything Easy is Hard Again
Frank Chimero vents.
simply npm your webpack via grunt with vue babel or bower to react asdfjkl;lkdhgxdlciuhw