Getting Started With Prelude 6

We use prelude-wp as our start point for all of our WordPress projects.

These are the steps you should follow to install Prelude if you are not using our small site blueprint.

Install a Site with Local and Prelude 6

Step 1. Create a new site in Local

Follow the wizard in Local in setting up a new site.

Under the "Set Up WordPress" screen in the wizard, make sure that:

• WordPress username is factor1admin
• WordPress password is factor1dev (at site launch, this will be updated to a secure password)
• WordPress email is [email protected]

Step 2. Install Prelude 6

Navigate in Terminal to the themes directory within the site you created in Step 1.

cd ...wp-content/themes

Install Prelude 6 and follow the wizard that appears in Terminal. Fill out the theme name, description, author, author url, and license (GPL-3.0) fields.

npx prelude-wp yourthemename

Once you've completed that wizard, navigate into the new theme directory.

cd yourthemename

From here, you'll need to create a couple files:

touch README.md

touch .env

In the new readme file, place the site name as an H1 (you'll complete the rest of the info once development is complete using our readme template).

In the .env file, add the WP URL from Local to enable hot reloading functionality during development:

WP_URL="http://local-site-url.test/"

Step 3. Install Ginger Grid

We use Ginger Grid on every project. In your theme directory, run the following command:

yarn add ginger-grid

Copy the contents of node_modules/ginger-grid/settings/_settings.scss and paste them into assets/scss/settings/_ginger-settings.scss.

In assets/scss/theme.scss, paste the following lines after the // Variables block:

// Ginger Grid
@import "settings/ginger-settings";
@import "./node_modules/ginger-grid/ginger";

Step 4. Add in our commonly used snippets

Many of these are documented here.

Step 5. Install Git and Setup Github Repo

Back in the theme directory, run the following series of commands to install git:

git init

git add .

git commit -m "Initial commit of theme files"

Then proceed to Github and follow the steps to set up a new repo there.

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Important! We follow Github best practices to properly document our work and enable collaboration on each project. These include:

• Never doing any work directly on the master or develop branches. Always make a new branch off of one of these and do work there (ex. git checkout -b yourbranchname)
• The master branch is for the live (production) version of the site. The develop branch represents the staging site if there is one. If there's no staging site, develop should be synced with master.
• When you are done with whatever branch you are working on and all work is approved, you may merge your branch into either develop and/or master (depending on whether your work is moving to production, staging, or both)

Here's an example of merging a feature branch into develop:

git checkout develop

git pull (Always always always pull. You never know if work has been committed in the meantime)

git merge --no-ff feature/slider (Use the --no-ff flag every time. This ensures that each commit is visible on the branch after a merge in case of issues later on)

git push

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Step 6. Install All Needed WordPress Plugins and Activate New Theme

You'll find the list of plugins we use here. Make sure to install/update to the latest versions.

Further Reading

Visit http://prelude.factor1.org for more documentation.