Get Started!

After you have downloaded the boilerplate zip file by clicking the funky Download button, and are wondering what you should do next, this page should answer that question.

• Unzip the file into your brand new project. You might want to look at each of the following files:

HTML

• If you are using templates, you may have to integrate it within that templating system.
• Link to the full URLs for CSS and JS files, especially if you are using templates, and the paths have sub-directories like : /omg/awes/index.php
• The class to use on elements with transparent PNG background images is .png_bg If you want to use something else, make sure you edit DD_belatedPNG.fix('img, .png_bg'); with the class you want to use.
• On production environment, you should remove the link to the profiling script. If you are comfortable using the command line, consider giving the Build Script a try to make it easier.
• Edit the Google Analytics snippet at the bottom with the analytics ID for your project.
• If you are creating only static pages, then duplicate index.html as many times as you want (after you have adjusted it to your satisfaction), and then add your markup for each page.
• If you are wondering about the ?v=2 stuff, read this post on Cache Busting

CSS

• Put all the styles you need in your project within the style.css file, right after the comment line that begins with 'Primary Styles'.

###JS

• Consider rolling the JavaScript for all the plugins you use into the plugins.js file within js/plugins.js folder.
• If you are using a third-party JavaScript library (e.g. for your shopping cart system, events), consider putting those files under 'mylibs' folder.
• Use script.js to put any script you use to invoke plugins or third-party tools. This way, it will be cached and does not need to be added to the page load.

Server Side Configurations

You could host your files on Apache, IIS, ngnix, or lighttpd servers. You can also host on other obscure servers, but Boilerplate has server side goodies only for these. The following shows which needs to be used for what server:

• .htaccess - Apache
• web.config - IIS
• ngnix.conf & mime.types - ngnix
• lighttpd.conf - lighttpd

If you actually know what goes within each of these files, consider going through the file you need and verifying it does all you require it to.

Other Janitorial Tasks

• You would want to update favicon.ico to point to the favicon you want, instead of the boilerplate one (a star within a dark green circle).
• You might also want to update the apple-touch-icon.png with the same.
• Edit the 404.html to add some professional touch.
• There might be pages that you want to hide from search engines, add them to robots.txt