Craft Link List (Archive)

Introduction

Who is Craft CMS for? Plus news, plugins and more.

Once again there's another selection of tips and plugins from the Craft community. Two pieces stand out though. Craft CMS 3 Orientation Guide and Who is Craft for? are worth bookmarking and sharing. Give them a read. The extremely specific PHPStorm tip about language injection was interesting too.

If you've got something to share, check out the submit a link page or find me on Slack.

Thanks to fortrabbit for sponsoring this issue. If you're going to host a Craft site, and I know you probably are, be sure to check them out.

Let's hit the links.

-John Morton

News

Craft 3.0.20 released

Craft 3.0.20 was fairly small and tidy, but did you see the new in 3.0.19?

Added the craft.query() template function, for creating new database queries.

Basically, you can build your own SQL queries. There was some concern in Slack that this provides a little too much power, letting you potentially make overly complex queries to your database. But that's what you get with power tools. Power.

Extending Craft CMS docs added

Check out the new documentation hotness:

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Tools, tips, and fundamentals

PHPStorm Pro tip for Twig templates

In Slack there was a discussion about getting code fragments formatted in Twig templates in PHPStorm. Specifically, to correctly format JavaScript code inside {% includejs %}{% endincludejs %} code blocks use language injections.

When your cursor is inside the code block, on Windows use: Alt + Enter

or on a Mac use: Opt + Return

Then select "Javascript" from the language injection menu.

Reformat the Twig file and it will treat the block as JavaScript, with the proper formatting and code syntax highlighting. Go even further and save this as a custom language injection. See Jalen Davenport's Tweet on this topic here.

Further on this topic:

Handy Craft Tips & Tricks

I thought this presentation from DotAll 2017 had been in the newsletter previously, but just in case, these are some pro tips worth reviewing.

Passing data from Twig to Javascript

Cruftless Craft is back with another tip.

Shared hosting environment and performance

Another great Twitter tip from Andrew.

How to conditionally load ES6 JavaScript in browsers that support it

ditto

VS Code extensions for the discerning developer palate

On Switching Code Editors

Perfecting your technique

Is it possible to limit the title field in an entry?

It's not built into the out-of-the-box Craft install, but the EVENT_BEFORE_SAVE event and a small custom plugin would get you there.

What is the difference between the Translation Methods when creating a new site

devMode.fm // Spelunking into the VueJS Frontend JavaScript Framework

Standard Agreements for Digital Services with Gabe Levine & Josh Barrett

In this episode of CTRL+CLICK CAST:

The service agreements you sign with your clients are more than just legal contracts. They are core to your business operations and client relationships.

Plugged In

Eager Beaver for Craft 3

Allows you to eager load elements from auto-injected Entry elements on demand from your templates.

Craft Cheat Sheet plugin for Craft 3

A fast and customized set of instantly usable Field code samples.

Sprout SEO Plugin for available for Craft 3

Mailgun plugin for Craft

Mailgun mailer adapter for Craft CMS

Connect plugin for Craft CMS 3.x

Allows you to connect to external databases and perform db queries.

Craft Email Validator

Email address validation for user registrations, custom forms and more.

Craft Vue now uses Vue CLI 3

All the power of a Vue CLI's scaffolding, dev tools, and single file components tailored for a Craft CMS project. Updated Craft-Vue to use the new Vue CLI 3.

(See also "Vue CLI 3.0 is here!" later in this newsletter.)

The Craft Advantage

Who is Craft for? ⭐️

In Slack recently a user asked "what makes the craft technology stack so good compared to other CMS's?" Leslie Camacho, Customer Officer at Pixel & Tonic, shared the following:

For biz people... Craft sits between WordPress and “Enterprise” which is where the majority of agency work comes from. In terms of budgets, Craft is very successful in budgets of $25k - $300k (and there are certainly smaller and larger Craft projects budget wise too). This translates to great work for small to mid-size businesses. Those budgets are real, but not big enough to be interesting to Acquia (makers of Drupal) or Automattic. Neither company is interested in optimizing their CMS's for those budgets/clients. For internal projects this also holds true. Nobody at Automattic or Acquia is directly responsible to you for any bugs or security issues you may encounter. At Craft, we have direct responsibility since we sold you the software. To get the same response from the makers of Drupal or WP, you’re looking at a min $15k/yr spend, more likely around $75k.

This is another way of saying that Craft is made for devs, authors, and designers and not enterprise IT managers or stakeholders that will never touch the CMS. So even though you have similar tech stacks, the use case is different, so the experience using the two is pretty different as well. Craft is always optimized for the people who interact with it on a daily bases.