Creator

Why?

• This was creator for folks at my local WordPress Meetup group to get them started using some modern frontend developer tooling.

Note

• This is for local development of a WordPress theme using something like:
  • Local by Flywheel (reccomended)
  • MAMP
  • ServerPress
  • VVV (somewhat complex)
  • Scotchbox (somewhat complex)

Features

• Sass (.scss)
• Autoprefixer (automatically creates css rules for IE10+ compatibility)
• Modern JavaScript ES2015+ (compiles to ES5 for IE10+ compatibility)

Get Started

• Open your terminal, cd into your themes directory
  • (e.g. cd ~/Local\ Sites/project/app/public/wp-content/themes)
• Clone the repo git clone https://github.com/mizner/Creator
• Run yarn install (or npm alternatives) ... I highly recommend yarn.
• To build assets (css & javascript) run gulp build
  • Note: .scss files will pre-process to .css files output in the /dist folder
  • Note: All .js files get combined and minified to one file output in the /dist folder
• Open gulpfile.js and make sure localUri is changed from http://wordpress.dev to whatever you local site is e.g localhost:8000, http://mysite.dev, etc.
• Now the awesome part, run gulp watch
  • Note: This will open your browser to localhost:3000 (probably) and watch for changes you make to theme files.
  • Note: .js and .php files with cause the page to reload
  • Awesome Note: .scss files changes will inject the new sites into the site without reloading (well... 99% of the time).
• Clean up the files in the assets/scripts (there's just some simple code inside as an example)
• Have fun writing .scss and watching your changes happen immediately

What's different from the regular underscores theme?

• The style.css file is only being loaded on the backend to allow it to be activated. No css changes here will effect the frontend.
• functions.php (starting at line 123) has been lightly modified to enqueue 3 new files
  • Our main css file that is dynamically created via gulp
  • Our main js file that is dynamically created via gulp
  • A WooCommerce css file (if WooCommerce exists) that is dynamically created via gulp

How to use the tools here in your existing theme/child-theme:

• Copy package.json and gulpfile.js into your existing theme.
• Create a assets folder with two subdirectory folders inside scripts and style
• Create a main.js file in the scripts folder
• Create a main.scss file in the style folder
• Run yarn install after you've cd into the theme directory
• Make sure you've changed the url
• Modify your functions.php to enqueue the css and js files

Example:

function gulp_enqueues() {
    $childtheme_css = get_stylesheet_directory_uri() . '/dist/main.min.css'; // Use if not a child theme 
    $theme_css = get_template_directory_uri() . '/dist/main.min.css'; // Use if not a child theme
    wp_enqueue_style( 'gulp-style', $theme_css );

    $childtheme_js = get_stylesheet_directory_uri() . '/dist/main.min.js'; // Use if not a child theme 
    $theme_js = get_template_directory_uri() . '/dist/main.min.js'; // Use if not a child theme
    wp_enqueue_script( 'gulp-script', $theme_js, [ 'jquery' ], '1.0', true );
}
add_action( 'wp_enqueue_scripts', 'gulp_enqueues' );