JointsWP launched a little more than 5 years ago as a forked version of Bones (R.I.P.) that included some Foundation 4 functionality. Since then JointsWP has grown and is now used by thousands of developers worldwide on everything from enterprise level WordPress websites to personal blogs.
We’re excited to launch JointsWP 5 today (in both Sass and CSS versions) – which will make developing high quality, high performance WordPress websites even easier by utilizing an improved workflow and modern developer tools.
Let’s talk about what’s changed!
Foundation 6.4 – do we need to say more?
Foundation 6.4 launched with a ton of new, innovative features including an entirely new default “XY Grid” system powered by Flexbox. JointsWP 5 utilizes the XY grid by default, but of course, you can easily use any of the three grids included in Foundation.
Making Gulp Easier – An Improved Gulp Workflow
Gulp is an amazing tool that greatly improves the lives of developers (not even kidding). The Sass version of JointsWP now requires Gulp – but you literally need no knowledge of Gulp to get up and running (although we do highly reccomend learning Gulp – because it’s awesome). If you can open your terminal, you can now utilize the power of Gulp.
- Want to watch for changes?
npm run watch - Want to update Foundation?
npm run foundation - Want to optimize images?
npm run images
It really is that easy.
Developers who are more advanced with Gulp will find a much improved gulpfile that is easy to extend and build upon. If you’re a gulp-fanatic, we encourage you to check it out. A lot of time was put into improving the Gulp workflow. (Insider note: we’re already working on making this even better!)
Utilizing NPM to Maintain Foundation (and shed some weight)
In previous versions of JointsWP, we utilized Bower to manage Foundation and NPM to manage other dependencies. However, with NPM becoming more and more popular, we have completely dropped Bower. Foundation is now downloaded (and updated) through simple NPM commands.
This also allows us to utilize Foundation the way it was meant to be used – as a tool. Since the Foundation files are now in your node_modules directory, “raw” Foundation files are no longer included in your production themes. Instead, they are compiled and minified with your custom code. And as always, you can easily select which files you want to include in your final build.
By not including “raw” Foundation files, we are able to achieve a smaller, more lightweight final product. Note: The CSS version of JointsWP does not utilize NPM.
The Other Stuff
- Removed “translation” files. As a “blank” theme, nearly 90% of the theme is going to be changed by the time you finish your build. Having “premade” translation files gave developers a false sense of having a theme that was properly translated. We may be adding a tool to the Gulp workflow to help build translation POT files.
- Cleaned up Sass/CSS files. We removed a lot of the empty placeholder styles.
- Improved code comments.
- More awesomeness.
Who is NeatlyPressed?
You may have noticed JointsWP is now a NeatlyPressed project.
NeatlyPressed is owned by Materiell, a ZURB Foundation partner and expert in WordPress development. At NeatlyPressed, we maintain and manage WordPress websites for large enterprise, government, and education clients throughout the U.S. We also build awesome tools for WordPress developers.
What are you waiting for?! Check out the new “Getting Started” page (for Sass and CSS) and let us know what you think below!
