Static base

This repo is a fresh start to create a custom website (static adaptation of Roadiz BaseTheme).

• Find and replace every StaticBase occurences over this folder using your own project name, verify in:
  • Absolute paths in bootstrap.js
• Do not forget to npm install and bower install in your / folder.

Extrenal JS framework

Base theme uses Gulp and Bower to deal with front development files. We chose to use ES6 javascript transpiled with Babel and loaded via RequireJS.

Then we externalized all the JS logic and routing system into https://github.com/rezozero/starting-blocks so that your theme only host specific JS code and will be able to easily upgrade common JS features.

We encourage to read Page-Block README: https://github.com/rezozero/starting-blocks/blob/master/README.md to understand how we route and synchronize our Twig generated DOM with our ES6 scripts.

Bootstrap

We use Bootstrap right in StaticBase but you can choose what feature to include in your style not to bloat your CSS files. We recommend to use LESS version to ignore unnecessary modules. Open your /less/styles.less and comment/uncomment your Bootstrap modules files, you even can override Bootstrap variables.

Gulp

This blank theme uses Gulp to manage your LESS, JS and CSS files. When you set it up, Gulp will generate versioned CSS and JS files to be properly served over browser caches.

First of all, go to / folder.

• Install NodeJS - http://nodejs.org/
• Install Bower - http://bower.io/
• Install gulp-cli - https://github.com/gulpjs/gulp/blob/master/docs/getting-started.md
• Install theme development tools npm install
• Install bower theme dependancies bower install

Then you can launch Gulp in background to listen every file update: this command will generate development CSS file (with source-map and not-minified) and transpile your ES6 scripts.

gulp watch

And when you need to prepare files for production: this command will generate production CSS files (no source-map and minified) and will optimize requireJS dependence tree into a single JS bundle in /build/ folder.

gulp

Versioning

Versioning is really important in order to avoid browser and public cache problems after a site update.

Gulp will generate a build/ folder for optimized JS file and a css/ for CSS files, all files will have random generated name suffix. Then Gulp will inject these files directly into your Resources/views/base.html.twig template at each change.

For LESS files, it’s a bit different. To add a new LESS file, just include it in /less/style.less file, which is your main project stylesheet. For Bower stylesheet, just do the same in /less/vendor.less. Do not forget to use @import (inline) syntax to force LESS compiler to include files contents if you want to import plain CSS files.

In development mode

When you work with gulp watch running in background, Gulp will only compile your LESS files in /css/ folder and transpile your ES6 javascript files into dist/ folder. It won’t optimize nor uglify your JS.

In production mode

When you execute a gulp command, Gulp will compile your LESS files and it will optimize your RequireJS tree with your Bower dependencies and your own JS files into //build folder. As in development mode, Twig will automatically inject your assets to insert as many <script> and <link> tags as needed.