Website Development on ProcessWire CMS

ProcessWire CMS Website Development

ProcessWire is a non-relational CMS with an API built around the concept "everything is a page". Each content unit is a page with fields; a template is a PHP file that renders the page. This architecture gives complete control over data structure without the limitations of WordPress or Drupal.

When to Choose ProcessWire

ProcessWire wins in tasks where content structure is complex and non-standard: service catalogs with dozens of attributes, multilingual portals, sites with non-standard page hierarchy. It doesn't impose a site type — there are no "posts" and "pages" like in WP, only pages with fields that you define yourself.

Typical projects:

• corporate sites with non-trivial section structure
• product catalogs with faceted filtering
• multilingual sites (up to 30+ languages via LanguageSupport)
• portals with custom content access rights

Project Architecture

ProcessWire template structure follows a simple principle: one template — one PHP file in /site/templates/. Markup, logic, and data can be separated through controllers/ directory or through built-in _init.php/_main.php.

/site/
  templates/
    _init.php          # global variables, helper includes
    _main.php          # layout wrapper (header/footer)
    home.php           # home template
    services.php       # service list template
    service-item.php   # single service template
    partials/
      nav.php
      hero.php
  modules/             # custom modules
  config.php

Data access via $pages API:

// Get all child pages with filtering
$services = $pages->find("template=service-item, status=published, sort=sort, limit=12");

// Full-text search
$results = $pages->find("template=service-item, title|body*=$q, limit=20");

// Nested selectors
$recent = $pages->find("template=news, date>=" . strtotime("-30 days") . ", sort=-date");

Fields and Data Types

ProcessWire supports 30+ field types out of the box: FieldtypeText, FieldtypeTextarea, FieldtypeImage, FieldtypeFile, FieldtypePage (relations), FieldtypeRepeater (repeating groups), FieldtypeOptions, FieldtypeMapMarker.

Relations between pages — via FieldtypePage:

// services.php template — output related materials
foreach ($page->related_cases as $case) {
    echo "<a href='{$case->url}'>{$case->title}</a>";
}

FieldtypeRepeater is used for sections with variable number of blocks — e.g., icon + title + text blocks on a landing:

foreach ($page->features as $feature) {
    echo "<div class='feature'>";
    echo "<img src='{$feature->icon->url}'>";
    echo "<h3>{$feature->headline}</h3>";
    echo "<p>{$feature->text}</p>";
    echo "</div>";
}

Multilingual Support

Modules LanguageSupport, LanguageSupportFields, LanguageSupportPageNames are enabled via admin. After activation, each text field gets language tabs. In template, language switching is one line:

$user->language = $languages->get("en");
echo $page->title; // returns English title

Page URLs are also translated: /ru/uslugi/razrabotka/ and /en/services/development/ — the same page.

Access Rights and Roles

ProcessWire has granular permissions: you can limit editing of a specific template to a specific role, prohibit publication without approval, hide fields from certain users. Configuration via $config->pagefileSecure and PageEditPerRole module.

Performance

Template-level caching via $cache API:

$nav = $cache->get("main-nav");
if (!$nav) {
    $nav = buildNav($pages);
    $cache->save("main-nav", $nav, 3600); // TTL 1 hour
}

ProCache (paid module) generates static HTML files and serves them directly via .htaccess, bypassing PHP entirely — speed approaches static sites.

Typical Development Timeline

Headless Mode

ProcessWire works as headless CMS via ProcessWireAPI module or manually — template returns JSON:

// api.php — API endpoint template
header("Content-Type: application/json");
$data = [];
foreach ($pages->find("template=product, limit=50") as $p) {
    $data[] = [
        "id"    => $p->id,
        "title" => $p->title,
        "slug"  => $p->name,
        "price" => $p->price,
        "image" => $p->image->httpUrl ?? null,
    ];
}
echo json_encode($data);

Frontend on React or Next.js fetches data via this endpoint. ProcessWire then only handles storage and content delivery.