Theme, Sublime, Build, IISExpress

So phase one of the new theme is done. You're currently looking at a totally bare-bones theme (unless you're looking back at this post in the future) which I'll be building from in the coming weeks. To get this far most of the work has been in the project setup which you can find on github here.

Credit where it's due, I ripped the foundations of this set up from Pete's theme.

A quick run through of what's there:

• dannyt.sublime-project - the project file for the excellent sublime text 2 editor
  

  Main things to take from this are the 'build systems' and the paths. Simply opening this file in Sublime should leave you looking at the right project structure with access to build and launch systems under sublimes Project > Build Systems menu.

• src folder - where all the wordpress theme php files live
• scripts folder - unprocessed Javascript, Less and CSS files
• build folder - contains an ant build file and various supporting build utilities

So far I've found playing with sublime and streamlining the build process the most enjoyable aspects. The actual theme side of things hasn't really kicked off yet. I like the prospect of working out a good responsive design and brushing up on some CSS and JS wizardry but not too fussed on PHP. From the looks of things though wordpress deals with most of that and it's mainly a case of putting the right function calls in the right files.

I'm using IIS Express to run the theme locally which after a bit of digging around I'm pleased with the setup of. I can keep the configuration in source control and launch it as part of my build so I now have a relatively friction free development process.

I'll go through more details of the build process in a future post, normally I'd suggest leaving a comment if you have any questions but I've not got as far as the comment form in the theme yet! But feel free to message me on github or tweet me on twitter (@dannyt)