Craft Link List (Archive)

Introduction

Wrapping up another year with Craft CMS

We close 2018 with another issue of news, helpful tips, and Craft CMS plugins. Thank you to the creators of the latest batch of links. The Craft community comes through every time. ⭐️

What's of note in this issue? Plugins can now require a version of Craft. Check out the details from Brandon in the Plugged in section for that tip. There is news that Microsoft is losing its Edge (see what I did there?), and there are great Craft tips for all skill levels. Of course, there is another batch of Craft plugins to check out, including a new free first-party plugin to add webhooks to Craft 3.

Thank you to fortrabbit, an official Craft CMS Hosting Partner, for sponsoring this issue. If you've got a Craft site to host, check them out.

If you've got a link to share for an upcoming issue, send it along.

Let's hit the links.

-John Morton

News

Craft 3.0.35 released

There have been some minor updates to Craft 3 since the last issue. Version 3.0.35 fixes a bug so you can now safely use emoji in tab names in the control panel. Yes, Virginia, holiday wishes do come true. 🎄

Goodbye, EdgeHTML

You may have read the news that Microsoft is killing off Edge in favor of making a Chromium-based browser. This post from the Mozilla team offers their perspective on the news.

From a social, civic and individual empowerment perspective ceding control of fundamental online infrastructure to a single company is terrible. This is why Mozilla exists.

Craft 3.1.0 beta 5

Craft 3.1 is chugging along with fixes and gets a new project-config/sync console command.

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Tools, tips, and fundamentals

Craft CMS - Getting answers to your questions

In the Slack channel, a new Craft user asked a great question that long-time Craft users may take for granted. Where do people ask questions to get help for Craft CMS? Let's cover the bases.

One resource is the Craft CMS Stack Exchange page. It is perfect for technical questions about Craft CMS. It also has an archive of previously answered questions.

Another resource is the Craft Slack channel. You can get an invite to the Craft Slack here. Craft users hang out there and discuss things every day.

If you've got bugs to report or feature requests, head over to Github where the Craft CMS source code lives. Look for the issues section here.

Other community resources, including Craft Link List, are listed on the Craft Community page.

Enabling Fuzzy Search by Default in Craft

Fuzzy search, aka approximate string matching, is not the default way search works in Craft CMS, but this page from the docs will show you how to change that,

Execute PHP code via Twig?

Proceed with caution.

Craft CMS Webinars

Sam Hernandez from the Craft team has started a webinar series giving 30-minute overviews on Craft and occasional deep dives on specific Craft features. Check the sign-up page if you'd like to join in. They are a limited number of seats for each, so be sure to RSVP.

Sam shared a recording of one of the recent Craft introduction videos here.

Creating Templates for Each Individual Entry Type

The topic of having different templates types for pages came up recently.

It's one of those concepts in Craft that might take time to sink into your brain initially, but hopefully, it "clicks." The docs for this concept are concise. Take a look if you are new to how this works or want a refresher.

CVE security vulnerability database.

This website documents security vulnerabilities, exploits and more. It could come in handy if you're trying to convince a potential client of the benefits of your chosen CMS. For example, you can search for "Wordpress" and then "Craft" to see how these compare with each other regarding security alerts over time.

PHP 5.6 & PHP 7.0 EOL FAQ

fortrabbit, who sponsored this issue of CLL, had a helpful post on PHP 5.6 and PHP 7.0 being "end of life" and how to cope. Kiss your mcrypt farewell while you're at it.

The post is geared towards fortrabbit users but has useful info no matter where your site may live.

Perfecting your technique

devMode.fm // Craft CMS Plugin Developer Roundtable #1

Craft dev kith and kin gather ’round to talk plugin development. (Note: I don't know if any of them are kin. It just sounded good.)

A Craft CMS Development Workflow With Docker: Part 1

You know you want to say, “yeah, I use Docker.”

Vanilla Craft CMS Docker image

Otto Radics has updated his Craft CMS Docker image. It now uses PHP 7.3.

Craft CMS 3 local development with Laravel Homestead

Alex Aguilar shares details of his Craft dev process using Homestead.

Challenge #4 – Elementary, my dear Watson

Ben Croker has another challenge to test your Twig macro skills. This challenge is officially over, so the post includes solutions. Don't read too far ahead.

Contextual components in Craft CMS

Learn about DRYing up your Craft with reusable components.

Multi-Site Craft CMS on Laravel Forge on CraftQuest

Getting to Know Jason Mayo of Shape, Creator of the Commerce Widgets Plugin

Jason Mayo joins Stephen to chat about Commerce 2’s new subscription feature and the implications of plugins that come out of projects.

Plugged In

Plugin and Craft version requirements

Brandon mentioned an update that should please plugin developers. I'll let him explain.

[We] just pushed an update to Craftnet that prevents the Plugin Store and Updates utility from showing plugins/releases that aren't compatible with the currently-installed Craft version.

That means that it's now possible for you to start releasing plugin updates that require Craft 3.1 (e.g., if you want to start adding project config/environment setting / soft delete/edition support), and only people who are actually running Craft 3.1 will have the option to install at that version or update to it. Just make sure you have this in composer.json:

"require": { "craftcms/cms": "^3.1.0" }

Also of note, as of this change, if your plugin doesn't specify a craftcms/cms requirement, it won't show up in the Plugin Store, or show any available updates anymore.

Webhooks for Craft CMS

Plugin for integrating Craft with Zapier and IFTTT.

Paulo Elias suggested one example of what you can do with webhooks. You could use it to notify your server to rebuild your static site with the updated content from Craft. This plugin has already been determined to be "bada$$" in the Slack channel.

See this Tweet for even more uses for this plugin.

Craft MJML

Render Twig emails with MJML, the only framework that makes responsive email easy.

Shopify Product Fetcher

Load your Shopify products into Craft CMS.

Printmaker

Printmaker easily creates, concatenates, and outputs PDF files from your Craft CMS templates.

The Craft 2 version just went "free." Craft 3 version is in the works for inclusion in the Plugin Store.

SaaS Link Plugin Craft CMS 3 Plugin

Simple Field Type to link Entries to stuff in Harvest, Capsule, and Trello.

Link Vault

The Link Vault download link protection plugin for Craft CMS v3.

Protected Links

Protected Links plugin for Craft CMS 3.x

Elastic Search

Bring the power of Elasticsearch to your Craft CMS projects

Craft Relations

A field type to show reverse related elements.

Craft Uptime Robot

Monitor your Craft CMS sites with Uptime Robot.

The Craft Advantage

Toms End of Year Review - 2018

Tom Pickering from MadeByShape takes a look back at 2018.

This year, Craft 3 was released, and boy oh boy were we excited about this. Upgrading to this alone meant massive changes in our workflow, but by all means for the better.

Drupal Admin UX Study: What We Can Learn from Contentful, Craft CMS, Squarespace, and WordPress

This post may be written for Drupal devs, but don't let that prevent you from checking it out. The author reviews the admin interfaces of various CMS platforms, including Craft CMS, to get "food for thought about the onboarding experience for new users."

Overheard

Looking for a WordPress developer

It’s not Craft, but it’s interesting.

Mistletoe Offline ◆ 24 ways

How to make an offline 404 page.

Modern JavaScript Explained For Dinosaurs

Should I Use JavaScript to Load My Web Fonts?

12 A/B Split Testing Mistakes Businesses Make All The Time

hub · the command-line wrapper for git

manifest-json

Creates a Webapp manifest for your PWA.

Service Workers: an Introduction

Methods to Audit Docker Container Security - Container Journal

Animation on scroll position

Do you want to trigger animation scroll? Some libraries were suggested when the topic came up in Slack recently.

Or, check out the native Intersection Observer method built into many modern browsers.

If you choose to use Intersection Observer, you'll probably want the polyfill since Safari still doesn't support it.

Why Are You Still Using Yarn in 2018?

Quicklink ⚡️ from Google Chrome Labs

Faster subsequent page-loads by prefetching in-viewport links during idle time