project-seed

A basic starting point for web projects

Overview

Steps to follow as soon as you download this structure to start a project:

• Update package.js with data about the project (name, repo, license...)
• If the license is known update LICENSE
• Update .travis.yml with correct repo and other needed information.
• On index.html update the project title and check for other boostrap information that can be changed or removed.
• Remove unneeded images from the graphics folder and replace the favicon with a project related one.
• Delete this README.md and rename _README.md. Fill in the needed data. This is the most important task. Others need to be able to know what the project is about and how to work with it. This can't be stressed enough.

It's better to do this straight away so no traces of project-seed are ever pushed to github and just looks more professional. The values that are not immediately know should be left blank and filled ASAP.

Gulp for building

The gulpfile is based on the gulp-webapp yeoman generator. The build system currently supports:

• Image optimization
• Sass compilation
• Watchify for JS bundling
• Minification/uglification where appropriate
• Serving and live reloading of pages

There are two commands, both run via npm.

• npm run build or gulp build or gulp - clean & build everything and put it into dist folder
• npm run serve or gulp serve - serve the pages and utilize live reload on changes to styles, fonts, images, scripts and HTML.

Assets Structure

app/assets/
|
+- scripts/: The user scripts
|  |
|  +- config/: configuration files (see configuration section)
|
+- styles/: The sass styles
|
+- vendor/: Any third-party script that can't be required() 
|
+- graphics/: Images for the site divided in:
|  |
|  +- layout/: Images for layout elements (Ex: background images)
|  +- meta/: Images for the meta tags (Mostly icons and facebook images)
|  +- content/: Content image
|

Configurations and environment variables

At times, it may be necessary to include options/variables specific to production, staging or local in the code. To handle this, there is a master config.js file. This file should not be modified. Instead, modify one of:

• config/production.js - production settings
• config/staging.js - overrides the production settings for staging server (basically Travis not on the DEPLOY branch)
• config/local.js - local (development) overrides. This file is gitignored, so you can safely change it without polluting the repo.

When developing locally with gulp serve, the default will be to use production (with overrides from local.js). However, if you need to run with the staging settings, use: DS_ENV=staging gulp serve from the command line.

How scripts are built

The script build, which uses browserify, outputs two js files: bundle.js and vendor.js:

• bundle.js, created by the javascript task in deployment and by watchify during development, contains all the app-specific code: app/scripts/main.js and all the scripts it requires that are local to this app.
• vendor.js, created by the vendorBundle task, contains all the external dependencies of the app: namely, all the packages you install using npm install --save ....

Travis for testing and deployment

The .travis.yml file enables the usage of Travis as a test and deployment system. In this particular case, Travis will be looking for any changes to the repo and when a change is made to the master branch, Travis will build the project and deploy it to the gh-pages branch.

semistandard for linting

We're using semistandard for linting.

• npm run lint - will run linter and warn of any errors.

There are linting plugins for popular editors listed in the semistandard repo.