schlosser.io

schlosser.io is built using Gulp, Jekyll, and SCSS.

Features

• Install the project in just three commands (see "Developing" below).
• Use Jekyll for content management and templating.
• Use GraphicsMagick to resize images for responsive / retina loading.
• Use SCSS to keep our CSS organized into logical components.
• Use Autoprefixer to automatically insert browser prefixes where necessary to handle cross browser compatibility.
• Use Browsersync to automatically launch a development version of our website, reload the page whenever we change the HTML, and inject changes to CSS, JavaScript, and images with needing to reload.
• Use HTML Minifier, CSSNano, UglifyJS, and ImageMin to compress and optimize our HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and images, respectively.
• Use SCSS-Lint, JSHint, and JSCS to perform linting and style checking on our SCSS and JavaScript files.

All with one command from the terminal:

gulp serve

Setup

Install yarn. Then, install gulp:

yarn global add gulp  # May require `sudo`

Then, install GraphicsMagick. I do this via brew:

brew install graphicsmagick

You have done so successfully if you can run gm -help without any errors. Finally, generate the responsive images. (This can take a while!)

gulp responsive

Usage

Developing

yarn                   # One time
bundle install         # One time
gulp serve

A Note on Directory Structure and Compilation

Because Gulp and Jekyll to not play nice historically, static assets need to be generated into two different folders:

• SCSS source files live in _scss/ and compile to both css/ and _site/css/
• JavaScript source files live in _js/ and compile to both js/ and _site/js/
• Images in _img/ compile to both img/ and _site/img/

Note: the root level css/, js/, and img/ folders are in the .gitignore and are regularly deleted. Modifications to these folders may be lost without warning! Instead, edit source files in the corresponding underscore-prefixed folders.

Responsive Images

Responsive images live in the /_img/res folder. Place images that you wish to resize into the /_img/res/raw folder. To resize them, run

gulp responsive [--dir some/path ] # Becomes /_img/res/raw/some/path

This will create subdirectories within the /_img/res/ folder with resized images in each. By default, it creates the folders 20/, 200/, 800/, and 1600/, with images resized to those heights in pixels in each one. Then, these images will be copied into /_site/img/res/<size> for static access.

For example, if /_img/res/raw/test.png has resolution 5120x3200, running gulp responsive will create a 32x20px image at /_img/res/20/test.png, a 320x200px image at /_img/res/200/test.png, etc. After running gulp serve, those files will be available statically at /img/res/<size>/test.png. In addition, data about these images (filename / aspect ratio pairs, and generated sizes) is generated into /_data/responsiveMetatdata.json.

You can customize what size images are generated by changing the responsiveSizes variable at the top of Gulpfile.js.

Note: By default, responsive resizing is not included in the gulp serve command, as it can be very computationally expensive. This can be enabled by uncommenting ['responsive'] in the images and images:optimized tasks.

Note: By default, generated images and /_data/responsiveMetadata.json are included in the .gitignore.

Gulp Commands

An overview of Gulp commands available:

gulp build

Builds the site into the _site directory. This includes:

• SCSS w/ linting, sourcemaps and autoprefixing
• JS linting and uglification
• Image optimization and resizing
• Jekyll build

gulp build:optimized

This is used for distributing an optimized version of the site (for deployment). It includes everything from gulp build as well as:

• SCSS minification
• CSS / JS inline-sourcing
• more rigorous image optimization

gulp responsive

Resizes images in the _img/res/raw directory into _img/res/<size> directories, for several different heights in pixels (default: 20, 200, 800, 1600).

gulp watch

Watchs for changes in local files and rebuilds parts of the site as necessary, into the dist directory.

gulp serve

Runs gulp watch in the background, and serves the dist directory at localhost:3000 with automatic reloading using Browsersync.

gulp deploy

For use by Dan only. Deploys to https://schlosser.io/, but won't do so without proper authentication.

Structure

├── _img/             # All images that will be hosted statically.
    └── res/          # Responsive images
        ├── 20/       # 20px tall images
        ├── 200/      # 200px tall images
        ├── ...       # ...
        └── raw/      # Full size images
├── _includes/        # Jekyll HTML includes
├── _js/              # JavaScript libraries and scripts, pre-compilation
├── _layouts/         # Jekyll HTML layouts
├── _posts/           # Jekyll HTML/Markdown posts
├── _scss/            # Stylesheets, pre-compliation
├── _site/            # GENERATED Jekyll builds the site into this directory
├── css/              # GENERATED Gulp builds SCSS into this directory
├── js/               # GENERATED Gulp builds JS into this directory
├── img/              # GENERATED Gulp builds images into this directory
├── node_modules/     # GENERATED NPM installs JS modules here.
├── _config.yml       # Metadata associated with the site.
├── Gulpfile.js       # Controls Gulp, used for building the website
├── index.html        # The root HTML file for the website
├── LICENSE.md        # This project's license
├── package.json      # Dependencies
└── README.md         # This file