XT Tailwind for Joomla - The template

For future reference:

Tailwind CSS has arrived at the Joomla scene
anibalsanchez/XT-TailwindCSS-Starter
FAQ - XT Tailwind for Joomla. Questions and Answers about Tailwind on Joomla.

Prerequisites: Before you use this template, you must install Node.js.

The project has two repositories:

The Joomla extension build files, in this repository: anibalsanchez/XT-Tailwind-for-Joomla.
The Tailwind template itself, in this repository: anibalsanchez/xt-tailwind-for-joomla-template. The dependency is managed with the composer plugin mnsami/composer-custom-directory-installer to download the template files in the template folder.

To build the extension to package everything to have it ready for installation, please go to anibalsanchez/xt-tailwind-css.

The Tailwind template

Tailwind CSS framework is used in the development context of Node.js. So, Node.js must be installed to continue.

The Tailwind template can be executed in the following modes:

Development Mode
Proxy Server Mode for Joomla
Development Build
Production Build

Development Mode

From the source (src/) directory, the live server is executed to design the template interactively. The objective of this mode is to create as many HTML files as necessary to develop the prototypes. In our case:

Blog Home Page, index.html
Blog Post, blog-post.html

The HTML pages must be declared in webpack.config.js.

To get started, clone the project and install the dependencies:

# Using npm
npm install

After the dependencies installation step, start the Webpack Development Server:

npm i
npm run dev

The page is rendered here http://localhost:8080/.

Webpack Development Server will watch /src/styles.css and /tailwind.config.js and rebuild your stylesheet on every change. You can play around with /src/index.html (or the rest of the pages) to design the template.

Proxy Server Mode for Joomla

Beyond the basic development alternatives, now I'm adding the choice to develop the template in Proxy Server Mode. In the proxy mode, the Tailwind CSS template can be installed on the Joomla site and reloaded automatically from Joomla and tested dynamically.

So, first, create the template as an installable extension:

npm i
npm run prod

Then, zip all files (exclude the node_modules folder), install it on the Joomla site, and adjust the proxy proxyURL in the installed templates/xttailwind/package.json:

  "config": {
    "proxyURL": "http://jed.lndo.site/index.php"
  }

On our development server, the site runs on http://jed.lndo.site/index.php. Finally, execute the command to activate the Webpack development proxy. After the proxy is active, the generated site is rendered on http://localhost:3000/index.php so you can change the source style interactively in templates/xttailwind/src and navigate the final output simultaneously.

# Access to the site folder where the template is developed in Proxy Mode
cd templates/xttailwind
npm i
npm run dev-proxy

When you are done, remember to copy the changes back from the site to the repository and commit to making them permanent. Of course, if the repository is mapped to the site, you can commit the changes.

Development Build

This is almost the final step. It compiles all files, but it does not compress and optimize the styles. It is useful to test the template on different sites.

npm i
npm run dev-build

After that, you will have a ready to deploy bundle at /dist. Then, zip all files (exclude the node_modules folder), and install it on a Joomla site.

Production Build

This is the final step to produce the compressed and optimized template. To build a production bundle run:

npm i
npm run prod

Acknowledgements

Tailwind CSS - The Utility-First CSS Framework. A project by Adam Wathan (@adamwathan), Jonathan Reinink (@reinink), David Hemphill (@davidhemphill) and Steve Schoger (@steveschoger).
Webpack
PostCSS
cssnano

Copyright & License

Distributed under the GNU General Public License version 3 or later; see LICENSE
This project is dedicated to Andrea Gentil ;-D

anibalsanchez / xt-tailwind-for-joomla-template