Using JavaScript Task Runners for WordPress Development

For our Sept 2015 Meetup, we'll focus on using JavaScript Task Runners to maximize your productivity when developing for WordPress.

As a WordPress site increases in complexity, the number of files directly involved with the site increases as well. It's difficult to keep track of it all. For example: if you make one edit to one JS file, you have to then go manually compile all JS files into one JS file and then minify the file before refreshing your site. And what if you forgot a semi-colon? Time to rinse and repeat and you lose yet another few minutes of your precious time.

Enter the task runners. With just a little prep time, you can write a quick program that will "watch" files that you'll be editing. As soon as that file is changed, the task runner will automatically check syntax, compile, and minify. Suddenly you can check your edits in seconds rather than minutes, effectively increasing your productivity exponentially!

The workshop will mainly focus on using Gulp. You will learn how to install and set up Gulp, build your own gulpfile.js and run the file. Example website files will be provided. We will also compare Gulp to Grunt and other popular task runners.

Come on out and learn how to increase your productivity while developing! We hope to see you there.