## Work in progress, still writing this thing up
Base setup for an automated HTML5 banner ad project using Gulp
Important: If you have not worked with Gulp before you will need to install NodeJS before going any further.
-
Download & install NodeJS (It will install npm by default).
-
Head to NPM's website and follow their instructions to make sure it is up to date and to make sure the permissions are correctly set - (I tend to use option 2, btw).
-
Install Gulp globally:
npm install -g gulp
-
The required tools should be properly installed. Follow the instructions in the section bellow to setup the boilerplate.
-
Download the zip and extract it in the folder of your choice.
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Rename the folder to suit your needs.
The default folder name is banner-boilerplate, a good rule of thumb is to rename it to describe what type of ads will go into it. E.g. Standards, Rich, Expanding, etc...
-
Open your command line tool of choice and navigate to the renamed folder.
cd your-chosen-directory-path/banner-boilerplate
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Install the necessary dependencies with
npm install
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Once all is installed, type the following to see the sample ad that's bundled in this boilerplate
gulp -f 300x250
-
You are now done with the setup. See Usage bellow to start building your ads.
And if this is your first time, read the Long Version section as well for a in-depth run of how everything is organized
This is the default folder structure:
|- scr
| |- ads
| | |- 160x600
| | |- 300x250
| | |- 728x90
| |
| |- shared
| |- css
| |- fonts
| |- imgs
| |- js
| |- index.html
|
|- node_modules
|- gulpfile.js
|- package.json
|- README.md
You will be working from the src
folder. node_modules
and the other files are part of the Gulp and Node setup. There is no need to change them a priori. Do feel free to dive in and see how the tasks are organized and drop me a line if you know a better way of doing things.
The main index.html
is located in the shared
folder as are the, aptly named, Shared.js
and Shared.css
.
Link any CDN-base libraries directly in the index.html
- By default the sample ad has Greensock's TweenMax bundled.
All CSS rules that are shared by all ads should be created in the Shared.css
.
The same goes for any JavaScript. It goes in the Shared.js
.
Go ahead and build your first ad, keeping in mind you will use this first one as the basis of all other ads in this group. The easiest way is to simply adapt/resize/rename de sample ad already there.
For each different ad size, create a new folder inside the ads
folder naming it accordingly (You will need to reference this folder in one of Gulp's task). Eg. 300x250, 160x600, etc...