A couple of months ago, I’ve heard the first time about Grunt. I wasn’t that impressed. It seemed to be like a more advanced CodeKit, which was compiling my SASS and JS at the time. So I forgot about it, proving once again, that I just not am an early bird :/ Of course the buzz got too big for being ignored and now I am all into Grunt, Yeoman and even Gulp as everyone else.

Using Grunt for some time now, I’m beginning to realize that it not only improved my workflow, but changed it. So this article is not about learning Grunt, there already are some of them out there. It is about why I think Grunt, or more generally task managers like Grunt will really make a difference in how web-developers do their work.

A plattform independend foundation

But first some basics. One of the most important things about Grunt is that it is based on node.js and really runs platform independent. Also with node.js comes its community, producing an impressive amount of functionality. All the node modules they are developing, from 100% javascripted ssh-clients to complete test frameworks, can be used with Grunt.

Then there is npm, the node.js package manager. It lets you easily define all dependencies on a project bases. If you have to use the compass mixin library in one project and want to use bourbon in another, one line in your projects packages.js and a npm install fixes it.

Last but not least the node.js world is all javascript. That is so important because all web-developers, despite their back-end programming language preferences, know javascript. For a web-developer there are basically no hurdles to getting started with Grunt.

All in all node.js is a stable, well used and tested development foundation, with a living community and a huge amount of functionality packed in modules ready to download. Everything you need for your development workflow is already there. Grunt just helps you to bundle it all together.

Coding workflows

So, why is this such a big change? Before Grunt I already had a workflow. Or a kind of workflow that stayed pretty much the same for every project I was working on, but not entirely the same. This workflow even had multiple phases, like development, testing, bug-fixing and deployment and everyone of them had different tasks. To remember all these at the right time can be impossible sometimes. I don’t know how many times I’ve forgotten to merge and compress CSS for deployment or to do a last coding standards check.

Grunt is helping with these tasks, by just letting you write them down and executing them automatically when you need them. That’s what a task-manager should do. But Grunt, and that’s my point, is doing something more. It doesn’t only automates the tasks you have done before, it makes you build, rethink and structure them consciously. You have to think about what your workflow should look like in the beginning of a project and you have to refactore your workflow as the project evolves.

What I mean is: with Grunt we have begun to code our coding workflows. Just as we code our tests when we do unit testing. You might think thats no big deal, nothing a couple of bash-scripts doesn’t solve. I agree, technically it is nothing revolutionary. Yet, I think Grunt will change a lot for web-developers, because it is so well suited for sharing.

Sharing and evolving workflows

A Google search on gist “gruntfile.js” returns more than 5000 hits. So it seems that we are not just coding workflows with Grunt, we’ve even started to share them. I’m convinced thats because of the facts about node.js I’ve named before and that every web-developer is able write some javascript tasks in no time. That is the good thing with coding workflows. We are so incredibly good at improving our code. We already have a huge community, doing nothing else than improving code all the time. So, now our workflows have become formalized code, we can improve them the same way. We can share them on Github, ask about them on Stackoverflow, discussing them in our blogs or compare them to others workflows.

So I think, over time, this will change a lot about how web-developers work. That said, the perfect finish to this article seems to be my own gruntfile.js, defining my current WordPress theme workflow:

module.exports = function(grunt) {

	grunt.initConfig({

		pkg: grunt.file.readJSON('package.json'),

		// chech our JS
		jshint: {
			options: {
				"bitwise": true,
				"browser": true,
				"curly": true,
				"eqeqeq": true,
				"eqnull": true,
				"esnext": true,
				"immed": true,
				"jquery": true,
				"latedef": true,
				"newcap": true,
				"noarg": true,
				"node": true,
				"strict": false,
				"trailing": true,
				"undef": true,
				"globals": {
					"jQuery": true,
					"alert": true
				}
			},
			all: [
				'gruntfile.js',
				'../js/scripts.js'
			]
		},

		// concat and minify our JS
		uglify: {
			dist: {
				files: {
					'../js/scripts.min.js': [
						'../js/scripts.js'
					]
				}
			}
		},

		// compile your sass
		sass: {
			dev: {
				options: {
					style: 'expanded'
				},
				src: ['../scss/style.scss'],
				dest: '../style.css'
			},
			prod: {
				options: {
					style: 'compressed'
				},
				src: ['../scss/style.scss'],
				dest: '../style.css'
			},
			editorstyles: {
				options: {
					style: 'expanded'
				},
				src: ['../scss/wp-editor-style.scss'],
				dest: '../css/wp-editor-style.css'
			}
		},

		// watch for changes
		watch: {
			scss: {
				files: ['../scss/**/*.scss'],
				tasks: [
					'sass:dev',
					'sass:editorstyles',
					'notify:scss'
				]
			},
			js: {
				files: [
					'<%= jshintTag %>'
				],
				tasks: [
					'jshint',
					'uglify',
					'notify:js'
				]
			}
		},

		// check your php
		phpcs: {
			application: {
				dir: '../*.php'
			},
			options: {
				bin: '/usr/bin/phpcs'
			}
		},

		// notify cross-OS
		notify: {
			scss: {
				options: {
					title: 'Grunt, grunt!',
					message: 'SCSS is all gravy'
				}
			},
			js: {
				options: {
					title: 'Grunt, grunt!',
					message: 'JS is all good'
				}
			},
			dist: {
				options: {
					title: 'Grunt, grunt!',
					message: 'Theme ready for production'
				}
			}
		},

		clean: {
			dist: {
				src: ['../dist'],
				options: {
					force: true
				}
			}
		},

		copyto: {
			dist: {
				files: [
					{cwd: '../', src: ['**/*'], dest: '../dist/'}
				],
				options: {
					ignore: [
						'../dist{,/**/*}',
						'../doc{,/**/*}',
						'../grunt{,/**/*}',
						'../scss{,/**/*}'
					]
				}
			}
		}
	});

	// Load NPM's via matchdep
	require('matchdep').filterDev('grunt-*').forEach(grunt.loadNpmTasks);

	// Development task
	grunt.registerTask('default', [
		'jshint',
		'uglify',
		'sass:dev',
		'sass:editorstyles'
	]);

	// Production task
	grunt.registerTask('dist', function() {
		grunt.task.run([
			'jshint',
			'uglify',
			'sass:prod',
			'sass:editorstyles',
			'clean:dist',
			'copyto:dist',
			'notify:dist'
		]);
	});
};

This post describes a super simple and time saving Yeoman workflow to build WordPress themes. To make this post work for you, you should have a basic understanding of nodejs, nodes package manager npm, Yeoman workflows, Grunt and SASS/SCSS. Ones you have all up and running, you will create a Yeoman WordPress starter theme in no time. But it is not only a theme it comes with a bunch of features:

  • A fully funtional WordPress theme with a working grunt development environment.
  • The generated theme is tested against the Theme check and Theme Forest check plugins and runs without errors, warnings or recommendations, is visually tested with Testdata for the theme unit test, runs without errors or warnings in debug mode and follows the WordPress coding standards a 100%
  • A pre-filled HTML documentation

Getting started

Getting started with nodejs, npm and Yeoman is well described elsewhere, so instead of repeating all of it you will get some links that worked for me. To go on, you should have the current version of nodejs, npm and yeoman running. Than you can easily install our generator from the npm registry. Note that on some setups you will have to run this command with super-user permissions:

npm install -g generator-wp-theme

Now you have installed the generator you can generate your first starter theme. As you might want to test it in your WordPress development environment, you should go to a running WordPress installations themes directory and run:

yo wp-theme

Thats it! Just answer some simple questions in the terminal and the installation should run through without errors and installing the theme plus all needed local node modules.

Developing with the Yeoman WordPress theme

First of all the generated starter theme provides you with a solid base of WordPress theme templates, following among others WordPress theme directory and ThemeForest standard requirements. The functions.php file sets your theme up to support all required functions like a custom header and background. All should be ready to make your adjustments to build a perfect theme.

SASS/SCSS setup

The themes style.css file is compiled from a bunch of SCSS-files. To get a layout grid and some nice mixins the bourbon and neat libraries are build in. The SCSS-file names should be self-explaining, however a short overview in including order follows:

vendor/normalize
Includes the normalizing css.
vendor/bourbon/bourbon
Includes the great bourbon mixin library.
_base.scss
Defines the main colors of the themes and basic HTML-element styling.
_grid-settings.scss
Defines and includes the base setup for the themes grid. The default grid is bourbons neat.
_typography.scss
Defines all fonts, typography related mixins and HTML-element styles. Defines even some font-size variables.
_components.scss
Here should be placed the basic mixins and placeholders for the theme.
_wp-base.scss
Defines some basic WordPress classes, like sticky, alignleft or bypostauthor.
_header.scss
Contains the header styles.
_navigation.scss
Contains the navigation styles.
_content.scss
Contains the basic content styles for posts and pages.
_post-formats.scss
Extends the content styling with styling for multiple WordPress post formats.
_footer.scss
Contains the footer styles.

Grunt tasks

The generated Yeoman WordPress theme provides a working Grunt configuration. All Grunt related assets like the gruntfile.js and the package.js are placed in the grunt directory. The Yeoman generator has already setup Grunt for the theme and installed all node modules in grunt/node_modules. If you want to install manually, go to the grunt directory and run

npm install --save-dev

All Grunt tasks are called from the grunt directory. You can manage the following available tasks, by running these commands:

grunt
Is running the default task-list, which is the same as running grunt jshintgrunt uglify and grunt sass.
grunt jshint
Checks the JavaScript files and gives you some hints.
grunt uglify
Takes the JavaScript files and concatenates and minifies it to one file: js/scripts.min.js, which is included in the theme.
grunt sass:dev
Is compiling all the scss files to one expanded style.css in the themes root directory.
grunt sass:prod
Is compiling all the scss files to one compressed style.css in the themes root directory.
grunt watch
Watches the scss and js files for changes and runs the above tasks automatically, plus giving you a cross-OS desktop notice on success.
grunt dist
Runs grunt uglify and grunt sass:prod, takes all the production relevant theme files and places them in the dist directory under the themes root. Now the dist directory contains a production ready theme, which can be uploaded to a live server.
grunt phpcs
Requires PHP CodeSniffer with WordPress standard installed in the development environment.
Checks the themes php files against the WordPress coding standards.

Documentation

In case you want to upload your theme to some marketplace or theme directory, Yeoman WordPress theme generator even creates a HTML-documentation for you. The documentation is based on the Theme forrest documentation template It’s located in the doc directory and already covers some base information about your theme. You just have to complete it with your specific information and your theme is documented as well.

Now, make themes!

With the Yeoman WordPress theme generator (generator-wp-grunted-theme), you should get everything you need, to build great themes. Be welcome to let me know if you have done so, or even better if you want to add a important task, find a bug or have an improvement idea.