Issue 8: #craftcms on the nice list.

Introduction

#craftcms on the nice list.

2015 arrived with Craft 2.3.2624. Eleven months later, we're at Craft 2.5 (if plans hold, it will be the current version by the time you read this). Craft Commerce and Craft 3 are also on their way. How's that for a productive year? Nice work, P&T.

I'm closing out this year by digging through the list of links that have accumulated over the past few months. It's a long list, so grab an eggnog and dig in. See you in 2016.

News

Year-end list alert: Vote for Craft

The end of the year means many "year-end" lists. Craft CMS shows up on the 2015 People's Choice CMS Awards in the Best CMS for Designers and the Best CMS for Developers categories.

TIP: You don't have to vote in every category although the form makes it appear that you do.

Vote early. Vote often.

Brad Bell: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Support.

Watch this entertaining talk by Pixel & Tonic's Brad Bell from PEERS Conference 2015. He talks about the customer support experience and many lessons learned by supporting Craft CMS.

Featured Sponsor

Pic Puller for Instagram

Pic Puller helps you create an Instagram app to pull in your photos and videos directly into Craft.

Version 1.6.0 of Pic Puller includes updates for Craft 2.5 and the recent Instagram API changes.

Tools, tips, and fundamentals

What’s coming in Craft CMS version 2.5? (Hint - more excellence!)

Media Surgery posted a preview video in November (while 2.5 was still in beta) to whet your appetite of Craft 2.5. This overview will hit the big changes for you quickly.

One tip the video mentions, if you're one who likes to live on the edge, is a handy config setting you can add to your site to get betas earlier than the rest of the world. Probably not a good idea for production sites, but a good tip to know.

'showBetaUpdates' => true

Getting Started With Craft CMS

Someone asked me where to get started with developing with Craft. It shouldn't surprise you that Straight Up Craft has that covered.

Craft CMS: Beauty Meets Utility

Erik Reagan shares "a few of my favorite things about Craft."

His post covers neither raindrops on roses nor whiskers on kittens, but it does review why Craft will make you a jolly designer/developer and how it will make your client a merry content manager. (Sorry, I couldn't resist.)

How does template caching work?

How does caching really work? Craft CMS Stack Exchange to the rescue.

Remote Asset Sources in Craft

The reliable Mijingo comes through with another lesson on Craft. You'll come away know about why and where to store your assets.

Installing Craft on OS X using MAMP

Adam McCombs has posted a tutorial on getting Craft up and running on your Mac with MAMP.

Did you know?

Yes, you can use markdown formatting to your instructions fields.

To extend or to include, that is the question.

In November on Slack a question was asked about whether it's best practice to extend or include in Craft template creation. This Stack Exchange was referenced as a good resource detailing the different use cases.

Perfecting your technique

Updating Plugins for Craft 2.5

Have you written a plugin that needs to be updated for Craft 2.5? Here's a brief guide from P&T.

Craft Ops

This project's goal is to get you past the process of dragging files to your server via an FTP client and to get you using terminal commands instead.

Retrieve channel data in JSON format.

We've mentioned the Element API in issue 5 but this Q&A from Stack Exchange may shed a little more light on how you can use it.

What is the recommended Nginx configuration for Craft?

Is Nginx on your wish list? If you grew up with Apache like I did, configuration of Ngnix might be a topic you're not familiar with. Craft CMS Stack Exchange to the rescue.

Selectize.js is at your service.

This one is an FYI for plug-in developers.

According to the change log for 2.5.2713, Selectize.js is now a core library now in Craft.

Selectize.js is a "hybrid of a textbox and a <select> box." As soon as you check out the demos for Selectize.js you should recognize these UX niceties. Now you can incorporate them that much easier in your own plugins in Craft 2.5+.

makeItCraft

Nerd alert. Install Craft from the command line. (Nerds rule.)

Craft CMS Setup (Mac El Cap)

Bob Orchard has shared his shell script to getting Craft up and running quickly on your Mac El Cap machine.

This script assumes the following:

You're running Mac OSX El Capitan or newer
You have VirtualBox and Vagrant Installed already
You use Atom for code editing
You want to try out Craft CMS but don't want to use MAMP or a home-grown solution

Plugged In

CSS Crush for Craft CMS

Mark Croxton, a name recognizable by the EE-users among you for the magical Switchee for EE, has released CSS Crush for Craft CMS. You can now use CSS Crush in your Craft templates. Sweet.

Craft CMS Responsive Grid Layout Builder

Ben Callaway has posted a video of an impressive looking grid layout builder that is coming soon to Craft. He's also posted 2nd one showing how the blocks act responsively. No release date or pricing, but I'll pass it along when I know more. Nice work!

BM Private Messaging - A Craft CMS plugin

Talk amongst yourselves.

LJ Dynamic Fields plugin for Craft CMS

This plugin popped up in a Slack discussion last month. If you have fields that need the same values and will be in multiple matrix blocks, or other fields, check this out.

Twig Prune for Craft CMS

Making a JSON feed from some Craft entries? Check this plugin out. It's a Twig filter for Craft CMS templates to "prune" out fields of entries.

Code Field Type by Maxwell Labs

Hey, you, with the pocket protector, are you making a blog with Craft? Check out this field type that lets you write code samples easily in your Craft site.

Blueprint

Show, filter and provide an overview of all defined content (fields, sections, globals, assets, categories, tags).

Cache Flag

Is the native {% cache %} tag not fast enough for you? Cache Flag provides an alternative and in most cases, more performant way to have your caches clear automatically when your content changes.

Craft Patrol

Selvin Ortiz's Patrol simplifies maintenance mode and secured connections for sites built with Craft.

Put your site on maintenance mode quickly and easily
Force SSL globally or on specific pages with fine grain control
Uses IP based authentication to bypass maintenance mode
Allows IP based authentication even if behind CloudFlare
Allows logged in admins to bypass maintenance mode
Allows logged in users with proper permissions to bypass maintenance mode
Fully configurable via environment configs

Varnish Purge for Craft

This is a Craft plugin for purging Varnish when elements are saved, hence, the name, Varnish Purge for Craft.

Craft Autocomplete

A Plain Text fieldtype that pulls in autocomplete functionality across all uses of the field.

Stamp-Craft

Add a time stamp to your file name uploads.

Concierge: User moderation for Craft CMS

Concierge introduces a simple user moderation routine in your Craft sites.

When a new user registers on your site, Concierge will:

Suspend the new account
Send a holding email to the new user
Send a notification to a moderator

Yii, Twig, PHP & More

10 Things Not To Do In PHP 7

In last month's newsletter, PHP 7 + Craft was the star. If that was interesting to you, be sure to check out this post on PHP 7. It's not Craft specific but you'll want to know this if you dip your toe into any custom plugin development for Craft.