Introduction
DotSome of DotAll 2018, Craft news, tips, plugins and more.
As I write this from NYC, I see status updates of fellow Craft devs boarding planes leaving Berlin headed back to their homes. DotAll 2018 is a wrap.
If you were unable to attend this years' sold out Craft conference, this issue will give you a glimpse at some of what you missed. We've got slide decks from many of the presentations.
What links can't provide is the opportunity of meeting each other in person and exchanging ideas. The good news is that DotAll will happen again next year in Montreal.
Before diving in, thank you to the sponsors of this issue. Please check them out.
- Luke Stevens, needs your feedback on an upcoming SEO project.
- Portal is a new plugin to help you get a better view on your site across devices.
Let's hit the links.
-John Morton
Top Stories
The State of Craft 2018 ⭐️
Although there is no video yet from the DotAll presentation, Brandon's slides give you a taste of his keynote presentation. Here is a list of some of the points he addressed.
- Craft usage is way up
- Commerce 2 is coming
- An updated Plugin Store site is coming
- A new Craft site is coming
Check out the full slide deck for more including screenshots of the upcoming Craft site.
devmode.fm: Dot All 2018 Conference Recap & Analysis, Live from Berlin! ⭐️
The devMode crew was in Berlin for DotAll and recorded a podcast on location. Hit play for first-hand details.
News
Pluginfactory.io gains collaborators
The next time you use Pluginfactory.io to scaffold out a Craft plugin, you've got even more people helping you. Go team!
Happy Lager demo now runs Craft 3
Happy Lager was how many people were introduced to Craft and it's now running on Craft 3.
Featured Sponsor

SEO Keywords Pro: I need your feedback!
Interested in SEO for your Craft sites? I (@lukestevens) need your feedback! SEO Keywords Pro (in planning) will display your Google Search Console keywords data in the Craft CP. What features do you (yes you!) need? I'd love to get your feedback through this quick questionnaire. <3
Tools, tips, and fundamentals
Design Processes and Systems in Craft by Courtney Bradford
Check out Courtney Bradford's DotAll 2018 slides on how to reframe our design approach to be more human-centric and systems-minded.
Prioritizing Author Experience by Katie Fritz
Katie Fritz shared her slides fromDotAll 2018 presentation on making a better authoring experience in Craft. (Tip: when going through the slides, use all 4 arrow keys to navigate, not just left and right.) Based on what I saw on Twitter, she shared many helpful tips, like this one and this one, during the presentation.
Color coding your Craft sites
Katie Fritz, the Craft-tipmeister of the issue, shared this gist on visually differentiating the backend of a multi-site Craft install.
How can I make a template output its own filename?
Put this inside a check for devMode
and you're golden.
{% if currentUser and craft.config.devMode %}
<pre>What template is this? "{{ _self }}"</pre>
{% endif %}
Craft CMS Video Course by Alex Carpenter
From installation to launch, everything you need to know to build, launch, and manage a Craft CMS site. Sign up for updates on this project.
Getting Started with Craft Plugin Development
In this WIP CraftQuest mini-course plugin developer Ben Croker walks through some Craft plugin development fundamentals. Learn the steps involved in setting up a basic plugin, how to add a Settings page, and more.
Craft Hosting with Hyperlane
A free course from CraftQuest learn the fundamentals of using Hyperlane to host Craft CMS.
Design Processes and Systems in Craft
Courtney Bradford’s slides on design systems from DotAll 2018.
BundlePhobia: cost of adding a npm package
Find the cost of adding a npm package to your bundle. (Cost, meaning K size and time to download for your end users.)
Perfecting your technique
devMode.fm // Craft CMS 3 as an Application Platform
Another devMode podcast on getting more from Craft.
How to remove a category group via migration in Craft CMS v3
Craft 3.1 will make this even easier, but while you wait, check out this post.
Podcast: Lifestyle-Based Business Goals
Craft Commerce expert Jonathan Melville discusses the impact his personal life has on his business goals, his work on the Barefoot Contessa site, and navigating the tricky issue of ecommerce shipping.
Making a Craft CMS Website That FLIES
Andrew Welch’s DotAll 2018 slides on making Craft sites speedy. He’s knows that of which he speaks.
Scaling Craft CMS Sites for Large Launches
Matt Weinberg shared his DotAll 2018 slides on launching big sites and minding their performance.
Modular Architecture for Building Content Websites
Souvik Das Gupta slides from DotAll 2018 on the OOUX methodology and modularity.
Modern Frontends with Craft CMS, GraphQL, and React
Paulo Elias' slides on Craft + GraphQL + any flavor of reactive view libraries.
Sponsor

Portal - advanced Live Preview tools for Craft CMS 3
Preview your content on tablet & mobile in the device emulator and add additional target templates for users to switch to, all within the primary Live Preview window. Check out the introductory video for a quick overview or try it now in the plugin store.
Plugged In
GeoMate for Craft 3
GeoMate is a friend in need for all things geolocation. IP to geo lookup, automatic redirects (based on country, continent, language, etc), site switcher... You name it.
PDF Crowd for Craft 2.x
This plugin allows you to generate PDFs of your webpages using Pdfcrowd API v2.
CP Style Guide
The CP Style Guide plugin provides a style guide for control panel pages in Craft CMS. It helps you when designing and building your plugin's control panel pages by providing markup and twig template tags for generating native elements and form fields in Craft.
Redactor Custom Styles plugin for Craft CMS
Apply predefined custom styles to selected text in Redactor fields.
Craft Twigpack
Twigpack is a bridge between Twig and webpack, with manifest.json & webpack-dev-server HMR support. Want to see it in action? Check out this short video on YouTube.
It’s not Craft, but it’s interesting.
Laravel Valet changes incoming, says Matt Stauffer
Laravel Valet will soon have a lot of changes/features. Likely will be 2.1 instead of 2.0.13.
Five on Design – Podcast by Daniel Nisbet
In five minutes, Five on Design covers a broad range of topics for graphic designers, freelancers and other creative or entrepreneurial types. New episodes are posted every Tuesday and Friday.
Best order for elements in HTML head tags
In the previous issue of CLL, I had a link to a Tweet about the order of head tags. By the time the issue published, the author had removed the Tweet. (Dang you Internet!) Links are ephemeral. I'm pretty sure the final link you'd have been directed to was this post, featuring a reusable snippet to get your head tags in your templates.