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    Episode 94

    30 Jan 2025

    Hello again in 2025. While it feels as if the year has only just started, the first month is already almost over 🤯. We already had 3 Kirby meetups this month, and the next ones in Hamburg and Karlsruhe are around the corner (see below). All in Germany, boring? How about vising the beautiful British seaside in June? And Kirby 5 is happily on its way, and of course, we don't forget our Kirby 4 users...

    We also had our first "Plugin office hour" last Thursday, where we sat together virtually with plugin devs to discuss how to prepare plugins for Kirby 5, but also to discuss general wishes, requirements, and improvements.

    🚀 Kirby 5.0.0-beta.2

    The beta phase of Kirby 5 continues with Kirby 5.0.0-beta.2, and while there are still some open tasks left for the final release, we are getting closer every day. You provided some really useful first feedback and bug reports, and we try to turn that into enhancements and fixes before the final release, whenever possible. So please keep testing and reporting.

    🛠️ Kirby 4.6

    Today we are releasing Kirby 4.6, which is a bug fixing and housekeeping release and also comes with PHP 8.4 support 🐘

    🔌 New plugins

    Our plugin directory grows with every issue, check out these new plugins:

    • The Lingohub plugin integrates the Lingohub translation service into your Kirby website. The plugin allows you to upload content from Kirby to Lingohub for translation and download the translations back to Kirby.
    • Kirby Code Highlighter is a server-side syntax highlighter plugin for Kirby CMS, powered by Phiki, that uses TextMate grammars and VS Code themes to generate syntax-highlighted code within Kirby's code block and KirbyText.
    • kirby-openheart is a basic implementation of the Openheart protocol for Kirby that was created for the developer's own purposes.
    • Kirby Deploy Trigger provides a Kirby Panel view button to trigger deployments on any CI/CD service, such as Vercel, Netlify, or GitHub Actions.

    📍 Meetups

    The year starts strong with Kirby meetups. After Berlin, Munich, and Mainz earlier this month, here are the next dates to save in your calendars:

    👷‍♀️ Made with Kirby

    München Ticket
    München Ticket

    📝 Articles

    Joachim Robert shares his experience migrating the "24 jours de web" website from WordPress to Kirby, exploring various features and aspects of the Kirby CMS (in French).

    In our recent plugin office hour, Lukas Kleinschmidt shared his code to load plugins by priority.

    Kev Quirk explains how to quickly add an RSS feed to your Kirby based blog without using plugins.

    Thomas Günther explains Kirby's content representation feature, enriched with practical examples. Also check out the other articles in his blog, which is a goldmine for Kirby related stuff.

    🦹 Certified partners

    We truly believe that our partner program is all about building a strong network of reliable agencies and freelancers for Kirby. In each Kosmos edition, we will be highlighting three of our certified partners. Today ...

    If you would like to join our partner network, please submit your application using our application form.

    In recent months, we have already organized three 'Office Hours' events with our certified partners. These events have always met with great interest and everyone has benefited from them.

    🚀 Performance

    Harry Roberts explores how to enhance site navigation performance through a layered strategy with the Speculation Rules API. He covers techniques for optimizing internal link prefetching and prerendering, offering tailored approaches for both small static websites and larger, more dynamic projects.

    🛠 Tools

    Atuin replaces your existing shell history with a SQLite database, and records additional context for your commands. Additionally, it provides optional and fully encrypted synchronization of your history between machines, via an Atuin server.

    Vivus is a lightweight JavaScript class (with no dependencies) that allows you to animate SVGs, giving them the appearance of being drawn.

    Termo is a simple terminal emulator that can be used to create a terminal-like interface on your website.

    💈CSS

    Ahmad Shadeed wrote an interactive article that delves into techniques for achieving visually balanced text with CSS.

    James Stuckey Weber highlights the power of CSS anchor positioning to build intricate layouts without relying on JavaScript. He provides in-depth examples, such as organizing yearbook photos and dynamically adjusting text alignment.

    🔮 This & That

    To simplify tracking individuals discussing or working with Kirby CMS on the Fediverse, Maurice Renck created a curated list that you can easily follow.

    In his article Cool People Link to Text Fragments, David Bushell explains how modern browsers now support linking directly to text fragments on a page using a special syntax. This syntax allows users to jump to specific text highlights without needing element IDs.

    That's it for today. Get in touch with us on Discord, the forum, in the fediverse, on Bluesky or on YouTube. Or share this newsletter with your friends and colleagues.

    Cheers,
    Sonja from Kirby team