/Style-Guide-Boilerplate

A starting point for crafting living style guides.

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Style-Guide-Boilerplate v2.5.1

A starting point for crafting living style guides.

View Demo

Note: Sample patterns have been included in the demo. Your site will have it's own unique patterns.

Screenshot

Getting Started With Style Guide Boilerplate

Download the Style Guide Boilerplate

You can clone, fork, or download the repo from GitHub. Once you have the files for Style Guide Boilerplate, you'll create a directory on your site for them.

Set up a directory on your site for the style guide

I recommend creating a directory named style-guide in your site's root directory. I think it would be awesome if I could go to anysite.com/style-guide/ and check out that site's style guide.

Upload the Style Guide Boilerplate files

Style Guide Boilerplate is currently PHP based so you will need a server that supports PHP. Just upload the files from the GitHub repo to your newly created directory and your almost done.

Hook up your own CSS into the style guide

In the <head> of Style Guide Boilerplate are custom styles for the boilerplate itself. These have all been prefixed with sg- so they hopefully shouldn't cause any conflicts with your website's own styles.

Below the custom styles for the boilerplate, you will add in your own custom stylesheet(s) which you use on your live site.

<!-- Style Guide Boilerplate Styles -->
<link rel="stylesheet" href="css/sg-style.css">
  
<!-- Replace below stylesheet with your own stylesheet -->
<link rel="stylesheet" href="css/style.css">

Review your live site CSS

You should be able to go to yoursite.com/style-guide/ and see how your live site's CSS affects base elements. The last step is creating your sites custom patterns/modules.

Create custom patterns

To create custom patterns like buttons, breadcrumbs, alert messages, etc., create a new .html file and add your HTML markup into the file.

Save the file as pattern-name.html into the markup/patterns directory inside of your style-guide directory.

You should now be able to see the new patterns at yoursite.com/style-guide/

Create personalized documentation

To create personalized documentation for your markup examples, create a new .html file and name it whatever your markup snippet is named.

Save the file as markup-name.html into the doc/base or doc/patterns directory inside of your style-guide directory.

For example, if you want to create doc for markup/patterns/breadcrumbs.html, create a file called breadcrumbs.html and save it into doc/patterns.

You should now be able to see the new doc at yoursite.com/style-guide/

Browser Support

I've built Style Guide Boilerplate with progressive enhancement in mind to work on a wide range of browsers.

Known supported browsers include:

  • Chrome
  • Firefox
  • Safari
  • Opera
  • IE6+
  • Stock Android Browser (4.0+)
  • Chrome for Android
  • Firefox for Android
  • Opera Mini
  • Opera Mobile
  • Safari for iOS
  • Chrome for iOS

If you come across any bugs, or have any other issues with the boilerplate, please open an issue here on GitHub.

Additional Resources

Front-end Style Guides

Front-end Style Guide Roundup

Future-Friendly Style Guides

HTML KickStart

Oli.jp Style Guide

Jeremy Keith's Pattern Primer

Paul Robert Llyod's Style Guide

Pears

Starbucks Style Guide

Credit

Thanks to:

Jeremy Keith for letting me build on top of Pattern Primer.

Contributing to this project

Anyone and everyone is welcome to contribute. Please take a moment to review the guidelines for contributing.

Licensing

Style Guide Boilerplate is licensed under the MIT License

Use it, build upon it, make awesome shit with it.