Gesso for WordPress (w/ Timber)

Gesso is a Sass-based and Pattern Lab integrated starter theme that outputs accessible HTML5 markup. It uses a mobile-first responsive approach and leverages SMACSS to organize styles. This encourages a component-based approach to theming through the creation of discrete, reusable UI elements. Gesso is heavily integrated with Pattern Lab, allowing WordPress and Pattern Lab to share the same markup.

For more information, view the Gesso WordPress GitHub repo. To submit bug reports or feature requests, visit the Gesso WordPress issue queue. Also available for Drupal.

Global Prerequisites

The following packages need to be installed on your system in order to use Gesso WordPress.

• Node version 10 or greater. Long-term stable recommended.
• npm
• gulp

In addition, in order to compile Twig files, Pattern Lab requires that PHP be available on the command line.

Timber

Timber helps you create fully-customized WordPress themes faster with more sustainable code. With Timber, you write your HTML using the Twig Template Engine separate from your PHP files. This cleans-up your theme code so your PHP file can focus on supplying the data and logic, while your twig file can focus 100% on the display and HTML.

Getting Started

Timber Installation

In order to use this theme you must download and activate the Timber Library plugin from Wordpress.org.

Additional information about installing and configuring the Timber Library can be found in the Timber Documentation

Compiling Pattern Lab and Sass

LibSass is required to compile the Sass into CSS. Gesso includes Gulp tasks to compile the CSS and generate the compiled Pattern Lab files and to watch both for changes. To use these tasks, first run the following NPM command in the theme folder.

npm install

To initiate the Gulp build tasks that compile the Sass and Pattern Lab files and watch for changes, run the following command in the theme directory:

gulp

To initiate the Gulp build tasks only (without watching for changes), run the following command in the theme directory:

gulp build

Accessing Pattern Lab

To access the Pattern Lab instance, append /pattern-lab/index.html to your site URL and theme directory (e.g. http://localhost:8080/themes/gesso/pattern-lab/index.html) or, if developing locally, just open that index.html file directly in the browser from your file system.

Design Tokens

Gesso uses a configuration file source/\_patterns/00-config/config.design-tokens.yml to manage the theme’s design tokens and automatically generate the global sass map for styling and patterns to represent the theme’s design tokens. The default gulp command will monitor changes in the config and rebuild all necessary assets. To rebuild the theme assets a single time run gulp build

Design Token Colors

In addition to using hex values for colors, you can also use Sass functions and provide a fallback hex value to be used in Pattern Lab. This is useful when pulling in an external design system, such as USWDS.

For example:

gesso:
  palette:
    brand:
      blue:
        base: '#0071bc'
        light: !sass
          sass: 'lighten(#0071bc, 20%)'
          fallback: '#23a7ff'

Design Token Functions

The following Sass functions can be used to access the tokens defined in config.design-tokens.yml.

gesso-box-shadow($shadow) Output a shadow value from the box-shadow token list

example:

box-shadow: gesso-box-shadow(1);

gesso-breakpoint($breakpoint) Output a size value from the breakpoints token list

example:

@include breakpoint(gesso-breakpoint(lg)) {
  display: flex;
}

gesso-brand($color, $variant) Output a color value from the palette brand token list

example:

color: gesso-brand(blue, light);

gesso-color($type, $subtype) Output a color value from the colors token list

example:

color: gesso-color(text, primary);

gesso-constrain($constrain) Output a size value from the constrains token list

example:

max-width: gesso-constrain(sm);

gesso-duration($duration) Output a timing value from the transitions duration token list

example:

transition-duration: gesso-duration(short);

gesso-easing($easing) Output an easing value from the transitions ease token list

example:

transition-timing-function: gesso-easing(ease-in-out);

gesso-font-family($family) Output a stack value from the font-family token list

example:

font-family: gesso-font-family(primary);

gesso-font-size($size) Output a size value from the font-size token list

example (combined with the rem() function to convert to rems):

font-size: rem(gesso-font-size(2));

gesso-font-weight($weight) Output a weight value from the font-weight token list

example:

font-weight: gesso-font-weight(semibold);

gesso-grayscale($color) Output a color value from the palette grayscale token list

example:

color: gesso-grayscale(gray-2);

gesso-line-height($height) Output a height value from the line-height token list

example:

line-height: gesso-line-height(tight);

gesso-spacing($spacing) Output a size value from the spacing token list

example (combined with the rem() function to convert to rems):

margin-bottom: rem(gesso-spacing(md));

gesso-z-index($index) Output an index value from the z-index token list

example:

z-index: gesso-z-index(modal);

Design Tokens in JavaScript

The values in Gesso's configuration file are also exported to JavaScript objects so that the same values can be used in CSS and JS. The JS objects can be found in js/src/constants/_GESSO.es6.js. This file is also rebuilt whenever gulp or gulp build is run.

For example, to use a breakpoint in a script:

import { BREAKPOINTS } from '../constants/_GESSO.es6';

if (window.matchMedia(`min-width: ${BREAKPOINTS.desktop}`).matches) {
  // Some script that should only run on larger screens.
}

This will use the same breakpoint as breakpoint(gesso-breakpoint(desktop)) in your Sass.

If your token value is a Sass function, the JavaScript will use the fallback value, if available. If there is no fallback value, the token will be omitted from the JavaScript objects. In general, if you want to share a value between CSS and JavaScript, you should use simple strings or numbers.

Creating New Components

Gesso includes a script to generate new component files. To use, run the following command in the theme folder.

npm run component

Build Artifacts

By default, the compiled Pattern Lab and Sass files (e.g., /pattern-lab/ and /css/*.css) as well as some configuration artifacts (e.g., design-tokens.artifact.yml, _design-tokens.artifact.scss) are ignored by Git as these files are generated when the Gulp tasks run. To change this, edit the included .gitignore file.

Sass/Gulp dependencies

• Breakpoint: Easy to write media queries.

• Sass: CSS on steroids. Adds nested rules, variables, mixins, selector inheritance, and more.

• Sass Globbing: Adds glob-based imports to Sass.

• Autoprefixer: Adds necessary browser CSS property prefixes during Sass compilation.

Linting

Stylelint

Stylelint is used to lint Sass files. Warnings will break the build, so if you have a valid reason to break Stylelint rules you can have it ignore code in two ways:

1. Add // stylelint-disable-next-line to the line just before where the Stylelint warning is triggered.

2. To ignore several lines, add // stylelint-disable before the code in question and add // stylelint-enable afterwards.

The Stylelint rules can be changed in the .stylelintrc.yml file. By default, Gesso follows the sass-guideline.es and Prettier's recommended guidelines, with some additional customizations.

ESLint

ESLint is used to lint JavaScript files. If you have a valid reason to break one of the rules, you can ignore a specific line using any of the options in the ESLint documentation.

The ESLint config can be changed in the .eslintrc.js file. Gesso follows the ESLint recommended rules and Prettier's recommended rules with some additional customizations.

Prettier

Prettier is used by both ESLint and Stylelint to enforce code style consistency. The Prettier config can be changed in the .prettierrc file.

Prettier plugins are available for many code editors. If your editor is supported, we recommended installing the plugin to more easily reformat your code.

JavaScript

See the README.md file in the /js directory for details on included scripts (e.g., mobile menu, primary menu, etc.).

Maintainers

The Gesso theme for WordPress is maintained by Corey Lafferty, Lindsey DiNapoli, Karen Kitchens and Elvis Morales.

Please use the Github issue queue: https://github.com/forumone/gesso-wp/issues