Introducing support and new resources for Pinegrow plugin developers

Announcements
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Hi! I’m happy to announce that we launched a new documentation portal aimed at developers who wish to extend Pinegrow with their own frameworks and features.

And that’s not all.

We now also have a dedicated team member whose role is supporting our developer community - Bob Means.

Bob has been an active member of our user community, and has been independently creating Pinegrow extensions and developer tutorials.

Welcome to the team, Bob!

The pioneers of Pinegrow plugin development

From the very beginning Pinegrow was designed to be extendible. Most of its features are implemented as plugins that extend the core web editor, for example:

  • Support for frameworks like Bootstrap, Foundation, and even Plain HTML projects,
  • Components and master pages,
  • Static HTML CMS,
  • WordPress theme builder,
  • Visual CSS Grid editor…

We always had the intention to let developers extend Pinegrow.

Although the API was always open and accessible, it was never properly documented and we didn’t manage to establish proper support for developers.

Despite that, a bunch of resourceful and brave enthusiasts did manage to dig into Pinegrow’s code, figure out how the API works, and develop their own extensions.

Here are some of the ones we know of:

Resources for developers

At this, first, stage, we want to support developers who are interested in extending Pinegrow with new frameworks, workflows, tools and integrations.

We’ll be adding new information and examples in response to needs expressed in the developer community.

The goal is to make development easier for existing developers and encourage others to join and create Pinegrow extensions, be it for their own needs, to integrate Pinegrow with workflows of their organizations or to create solutions aimed at the broad Pinegrow user base.

In the second stage we’ll work on making it easy to distribute and market such extensions within the Pinegrow community.

Looking forward to what we’ll create together!
Matjaz

7 Likes
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Very - very cool guys @PG towers!

I’d first like to commend Bob @RobM who was the right man at the right time. I’m pretty sure, having a nice time together - and lot’s of questions and perhaps even a lil bit of help for him (if required).

Yipiehh - I am a pioneer - and still a lil bit proud of it!

In fact I know not much of programming and JavaScript at all. But thanks to the (at that time) existing MaterialDesign plugin and a very basic example, I was able to recreate my own “classifier”, still stunned that it works - and it does.

Looking forward to the upcoming.

Cheers

Thomas

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Thanks @Thomas!

That’s an interesting point - it’s really quite simple to create a useful PG plugin.

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@matjaz @RobM Thanks for the Developer Docs!

@Thomas It’s always great to suprise yourself and achieve something you didn’t know you were capable of. Well done, and indeed be proud!

Now with the Developer Docs available, you are maybe now able to optimize/improve your plugin or extend it and make it more advanced (don’t know if that’s needed or a wish). Or maybe, when you got another idea, you can challenge and surprise yourself again. And build another plugin.

@RobM Congratulations that you now are part of the Pinegrow team!

I’m a little bit confused, I thought you name was Robert (Rob), and now I see you are called Bob (by Matjaz). Is that an unfortunate typo, or do you have multiple names, or is in some countries Bob related to Robert. A big mystery… :thinking:

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Hi @Marf

Bob is in fact the shortening of Robert (as far as my pidgin-english isn’t leaving me). And another short form is Rob. So in real life, he prefers being called Bob - in digital life Rob. And his mother - for sure - will say “Robert, did you already … ?” :slight_smile:

That’s the plan. And honestly, this exactly would make PG so interesting even for others.

Recently, I stumbled upon an article about Monica.css which is more or less based on the inspiration I had for Reginald (almost 4 years ago). The “too much” and the “every framework has cool things - let’s mix em together” are just the two most important ones. The Sass work was first - and the Plugin work fit into this, nearby perfectly.

Applications like Pinegrow could rule - if only enough people out there would know about it!

Cheers

Thomas

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Hi @Marf

:rofl: :joy: :sweat_smile: :rofl: :joy:
Thanks for the explanation, @Thomas Yup, this. In my family, my dad was Robert, my Uncle was Rob, his son was Robby, and I was Bobby. We didn’t talk to the rest! :rofl:
I’m agnostic about being called Rob or Bob. Around town some people call me Bo - he is our mini-donkey and I have a shirt with a picture of him, his name, and our farm logo. Some people thought it was my name and I’ve hated to correct them. The only time I’m firm with my name is in my publications - gotta keep up a professional reputation!

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Well done mate! And congrats on joining PG team, FINALLY, GIVE MY REGARDS TO YOUR MUM
Robina
? :slight_smile: hee hee hee

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Where is the groan emoji?!?!?!

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I was trying out Pinegrow. I use Metafizzy’s Flickity, Packery, Isotope and infinite Scroll JavaScripts.
https://metafizzy.co/
Pinegrow Support pointed me to the forums with a question I had.
Would it be possible to add support and visual controls (to modify script options + reload) for JavaScripts through the plugin system?
Or are plugins not for changing snippets of JavaScripts ?

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Unfortunately, at this time Pinegrow really only supports HTML snippets and alteration of HTML files on the front end. Pinegrow is agnostic about what is added through the snippets, so you could make a library of scripts to add to the front end, I think. I haven’t tried it, yet. So, unless you can do everything you need through attributes (I saw some aspects of Flickity can be used this way) or you want inline scripts, a Pinegrow plugin isn’t the way to go.

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Thanks for explaining. I’ll keep editing the JavaScript options snippets by hand in VSCode. My trial has expired and I haven’t yet checked out everything I wanted to. See if I can tickle another week or so out of Pinegrow.
EDIT: Just emailed Support. Let’s see if I get another 7 days.