Perch V4 (and future) Megathread

  • Hi everyone,


    Off the back of our introductory thread, it was suggested that we setup a separate thread for suggestions and requests for the future of Perch, V4 and beyond. Our current timeline is to release V4 by the end of June, so not everything raised may be included in V4, but we will be raising all suggestions here with the business and development teams.


    Thanks everyone, look forward to hearing from you!

  • Edit Perch region from the front end. Seems to me a very useful and sellable feature.

    See this addon as an example how it could work:

    https://github.com/rlb222/Perch-Edit-Content-from-Website


    the addon now doesn’t support every situation because at the moment regionId and itemId are not always filled. Example: within a repeater.


    why do we want this:

    The regions in Perch make it easy to define the template, when building and defining a site.

    But it can also mean the end user has to search through regions in Perch in order to find the right bit of content to edit.

    This would be a solution for that problem.


    thanks!

  • • SCA Stripe fix.
    • Spam prevention for shop customer registrations (members)
    • Improved UI/UX re: management of paginated information e.g orders and customers/members (If you have 100+ pages of orders or customers and you need to look at something that might be on page 48 you have to page through every page to get to it!)

    • Show more detail (ideally customisable, such as price) on the listing pages especially product variants. (would enable certain info to be checked – such as price or shipping without having to open each variant).

    • Customisable Shop dashboard page.

    • Generate pdfs of invoices.

    • Fix UI on pages where the SAVE button doesn't show.

    • Allow products to be sold in fractions. E.g. If a shop sells Material at a price £50 per metre allow the customer to order 1.5metres, the only way to do this at the moment is to have the Products/Price set up in CM and then use javascript to do the conversion so that the user sees it in the units they are used to buying it in.

    • Allow multiple selection of items and single delete.

    • Fix issues with assets/buckets/management

    • Prevent double registrations (with same email address) I didn't think that this could happen but it does.
    • Revamp/Refresh of 1st party pluggins to ensure compatibility
    • Revamp of Events plugin with integration with shop to allow ticket sales for events

    • Revamp of Events plugin to enable bookings (halls/venues and/or "time" e.g. lettings)


    Just a few things off the top of my head! (…well we have had two years to think about this stuff)

  • Hi everyone,


    Thank you all very much for your input, it's greatly appreciated and I'm glad to see people want to get involved! I'll collate all of the above (and any future replies) regularly for discussion our side. If people have already suggested something you would also be interested in please like their comments, we can then gauge the interest and priority of the various suggestions.


    Thanks again!

  • Images

    • Image uploads: define allowed file types, similar to « accept » for file uploads (e.g. JPEG only, no PNG or BMP upload allowed)
    • Generate images in specified formats (e.g. generate JPG and WebP versions)

    Multilingual support


    Not sure how it would be best implemented, but it’s quite cumbersome right now.

    Here is a suggestion, I'm sure other Perchers will have better ideas:


    1. In 'Settings' define the available languages (FR, EN, DE, …) and the corresponding paths (/fr/, /en/, /de/).

    A default (or "fallback") language could also be defined to use its content if a translation is missing.


    2. Add a "translatable" attribute to inputs which will be localised:

    Code
    1. <perch:content id="title" type="text" label="Title" translatable>

    This would end up generating title_en, title_fr, title_de inputs on the editing screen


    3. When displaying a field in a template, the right one would be displayed according to the current language (based on path): /fr/ -> display 'title_fr'


    If 'title_fr' is empty, use fallback content ('title_en')


    UI

    • A refresh, especially on mobile (it doesn't work well on iPad).
    • More control on editing screen layouts as they can become quite long (all inputs are stacked): columns (e.g. 'first name' and 'last name' on the same line)
    • Search in CMS (within a content region, page or full website)
    • Click on a column title to sort (ascending/descending)
    • Paging options (show x items per page, defined from Region options or top of the screen like WordPress)

    Forms


    Automatic deletion of messages at given intervals (e.g. after 3 months). There’s an addon for this, but there are some issues with it.


    Updates


    Update Perch and addons from Settings (like WordPress)

  • Pagination

    Better pagination options of content items in Perch admin please, i.e.

    • being able to change the number of items (form responses, collection items, products, etc) displayed per page
    • being able display more page numbers than [1] [2] [3] ... [55]?
    • being able to jump to specific page, etc

    I've vented on this before in relation to managing spam messages in the Forms app: https://community.perchcms.com…onses-collection-items-p/

  • Gareth S, there are some things that I'm sure are not coming to mind right now, but for sure, upgrades to the UI and security.


    First the UI needs some work, whether on desktop or mobile. More importantly, there are lots of internal scripts and styles used that are disallowed with a strong CSP. I would ask for a way to ensure that the backend can have a strong CSP enforced with nonces and hashes (if needed). Perhaps a constant like:


    Code
    1. define("PERCH_NONCE", $_SERVER['HTTP_X_NONCE']);


    This way it could be used on the front and backend.

  • Better image / media management.

    Wordpress for all its troubles does a decent job of media management (global file replacement, alt tags etc).


    Development of Back End Blocks

    Blocks are great, but can tend to break if pushed too far. Reusable blocks would be great - it can be achieved with runway collections and relationships but a standard feature would be very powerful.


    Modern Image Support

    Ability to generate modern web formats (obviously this might require server support).


    Pre Built Starter Shops
    I nearly switched career after building a Perch shop.

  • I would thumbs-up all posts and suggestions above, so I will thumbs-up none, it's the same thing. Using likes to evaluate popularity of the suggestion won't work. You should be able to figure out what is or isn't worth doing without number of likes on a forum post.


    - New kind of "shop modules", so for example you could decide to sell a regular collection item by dropping in some perch e-commerce tags, and hooking up whatever values from the collection item might populate the invoice. I don't see why the concept needs to be a "shop" vs "buy this thing on the page".


    - Instead of "better UI", how about better customisation and control of the UI, so we can easily make it look how we want? Please don't try to paint a picture that everyone loves, it won't happen. Just provide good interface options.


    - When limiting sub-page template choice with "may use these master pages" in page settings, it would be nice if as the admin, I could see the whole list when creating sub-pages, and choose any master page I liked, leaving only Editor roles with the restricted choice. So an override in settings for admin roles to ignore the "may use these master pages" setting for sub-page template choice. Easy!


    - And finally for fun... NOT copy Wordpress for anything! That place is out of control. They allow plugin developers to hook into the "deactivate plugin" button, so instead of deactivation you get marketing spin twisting your arm. Or not allowing deactivation unless you submit a form to the developer with reasons why, without any "skip this crap" button. Sometimes you need a plugin to hide the annoyances of other plugins. "Pro" SEO tools like Yoast inserting ads for themselves in your HTML? Don't worry, there's a plugin to stop that! But then read the comments of that plugin, whoops it stopped working because Yoast changed something... Please don't make Perch "like Wordpress", where devs charge $60 per year for a "search box" or $50 per year for an official plugin that "bundles products". Wordpress is not an inspiration. The other day Wordpress official attempted to dramatise the fact I hadn't renewed a certain minor plugin or extension of theirs, with a "tick tock" banner expressing that time is counting down to an expired subscription - the implication that bad things will happen unless I pay another $60 for some minor point update for a minor shipping label plugin. Please don't make Perch "like Wordpress"! /rant