Introduction
Craft CMS News, Plugins & No April Fools Jokes.
Right off the top, this is the April 1 issue of Craft Link List. There are no April Fools pranks in CLL. This is just the Craft CMS goods you come for.
We're just days away from the Craft 3 launch on April 4 and things are looking good. Craft 3 now includes a slick default template file after installation. Plus, did you know purchases in the Craft store are processed on Commerce 2? Yes, things are falling into place.
What else is on tap for this issue? The Craft ID site has received a lot of attention. We've got more plugins making the Craft 3 transition. Plus there are informative posts by your fellow-Crafters. Another full issue awaits.
Thank you to those of you who submitted links to the newsletter at submit.craftlinklist.com. Some links didn’t make it in the issue becaus we don't feature "sites built on Craft" here, at least not yet, but please keep the Craft links coming.
Thank you to fortrabbit for sponsoring this issue!
We've got a lot to cover. Let's hit the links.
-John Morton
Craft Link List
Top Stories
Craft ID
In anticipation of the launch of Craft 3, Craft ID is now a ready for you to kick the tires. It's a home base for seeing much of your Craft CMS life in a single location. What can you do there?
- View your order history
- Manage your Craft and plugin licenses, including those bought from an alternate email address
- Save your billing info for faster checkouts
- Plugin devs can also publish their plugins from there, view order histories and more.
News
Craft 3 RC 16 & RC 17 & RC 17.1
RC16, RC17 and RC17.1 keep tightening Craft 3 up in preparation for launch. Note the fancy inline asset previewing that you can trigger with a new [shift]+[spacebar] shortcut for previewing assets. Nice.
github.com
Craft CMS 2.6.3013
A few PHP fixes and support for the new Craft ID service is now part of Craft 2 with this release.
craftcms.com
GitLab 2018 Global Developer Report
If you enjoyed the Stack Overflow dev survey from the previous issue, you'll probably find GitLab's dev survey interesting.
gitlab.com
Featured Sponsor
Craft CMS Hosting Partner
fortrabbit is affordable, easy-to-use, scalable, and super developer-friendly. Regardless of the size of your project, fortrabbit takes care of the AWS heavy lifting allowing you to focus on development.
fortrabbit.com
Tools, tips, and fundamentals
Local server issues
Sam Hernandez share a MAMP development insight on Twitter recently. He recommended Chris Fidao's Docker workflow as an alternative.
twitter.com"2 months with #craftcms support has taught me: 1) Local server issues cost a lot of time 2) MAMP is ok until it's the devil Best thing a dev could do is learn servers; the things our apps run on; and @fideloper's stuff is great! https://serversforhackers.com/dockerized-app"
How do you handle SEO on your Craft site?
This StackExchange Q&A talks over the paid and the free options.
stackexchange.com
Browser Details ⭐️
This may be one of the most useful sites I've seen in helping debug bug reports from clients. Ask your client to visit this URL and report the information it displays back to you. You’ll then know the environment they’re seeing the page from.
supportdetails.net
The Dangers of Over Reliance on Plugins
Sean Smith on the lure and pitfalls of plugins.
caffeinecreations.ca
Google Map with no plugin for your Craft CMS ⭐️
Sean Smith has another one for you. He’s written a tutorial that shows how to create a simple Google map, without using plugins, that will allow your client to update the pin location themselves.
caffeinecreations.ca
A Checklist for the Craft Plugin Store
This link is from my own blog. Need to get your plugin into the Craft Plugin Store? Here's the checklist I made to help me get that done. I like lists.
supergeekery.com
Craft CMS: Breadcrumb Macro ⭐️
David Hellmann has created a simple macro to build flexible breadcrumb navigation in Craft. It's written in German, but Chrome also offered up a readable and unintentionally humorous automatic translation into English.
davidhellmann.com
Perfecting your technique
A lesson from the Craft Campaign's "Sendouts" documentation
In case you ever need to execute a job with a long-running PHP process in your #craftcms plugin and want to avoid a timeout or the memory limit being exceeded, this link shows how Ben Crocker solved it with smart delayed batches. See Ben’s original tweet here.
craftcampaign.com
Zero Downtime Craft CMS 3 Deployments with Buddy.works
Rias Van der Veken shares some of his knowledge on Buddy.works and Craft. "Continuous deployment of a website or application with a service like Buddy.works greatly reduces the chance of mistakes that can occur when launching or updating a site."
rias.be
Website Deployment without Tears
devMode.fm takes on deployment of your site to production.
devmode.fm
Sponsor
Pic Puller: The Instagram plugin for Craft CMS 2 & 3
Pic Puller brings your Instagram media into Craft CMS with one-click authorization. Full documentation and code samples get you up and running quickly. Learn more at picpuller.com or find it in the plugin store in your Craft 3 control panel.
picpuller.com
Plugged In
Ansel for Craft (Craft 3 and up)
Ansel fieldType for Craft CMS 3 uploads, crops, manipulates, and constrains image files and assets for any element in Craft including entries, globals and more.
github.com
Sprout Fields Plugin
This handy plugin is now ready for Craft 3. Validate Email Addresses, Links, and Phone Numbers.
barrelstrengthdesign.com
Simple Map
A beautifully simple Google Map field type for Craft 3. Full localization support, compatible with Matrix & CraftQL, supports searching by location and sorting by distance.
github.com
Position Fieldtype
Brings back the Position fieldtype from Craft 2 since it's no longer part of Craft 3.
github.com
Sprout Import Plugin for Craft 3
Import your data into Craft 3 or even generate "fake" content as placeholder content while in development. Check it out in the plugin store.
barrelstrengthdesign.com
Imager Craft released for Craft 3
The ultimate tool for all your image transform needs, now for Craft 3.
github.com
Craftnet API Documentation ⭐️
If you're a plugin developer, this will be on interest to you.
The Craftnet API provides an interface for managing Craft/plugin licenses and getting updates.
craftcms.com
The Craft Advantage
Yii, Twig, PHP & More
Yii PHP Framework
Yii is the PHP framework behinds the scenes of Craft. They recently relaunched their website and Brandon "Craft CMS" Kelly has a testimonial on the home page. Internet fame!
yiiframework.com
It’s not Craft, but it’s interesting.
Switch PHP 🔀⭐️
Easily switch between PHP versions on your Mac. Requires Homebrew and works with Laravel Valet, but Jalen Davenport, a fellow-Crafter. He's got a full post about it as well.
github.com
SVGs, icons and more
There was an interesting thread about using SVGs as icons on Slack recently. Here are several of the resources mentioned if you want to relive the magic.
- Making the Switch Away from Icon Fonts to SVG ](https://www.sarasoueidan.com/blog/icon-fonts-to-svg/)
- How to work with SVG icons
- SVG spritemap plugin for webpack
- SVG Sprite - A Node module for making SVG sprites.
What does '>/dev/null 2>&' mean in this article of crontab basics?
You can read the full StackExchange post, or, as Andrew put it, "TL;DR -> don’t show any output or errors from running this command."
stackexchange.com
Website Support & Maintenance Thoughts
This doc has been bouncing around Slack recently. I don't know the origin of it unfortunately, but it's some shared thoughts on how to set up a site support and maintenance agreement between you and your client.
google.com
Algolia Is Our New Favorite Toy
Mitchell Kimbrough from Solspace sings the praises of Algolia.
solspace.com
Sloth ⭐️
Do you think that users have fast device/connection as you as developer has? No they are not. Their devices/connection are slow! Very slooow! Share their pain. You'll be a better developer because of it.
github.com