Mile
Zero

As I mentioned last week, the project scaffolding I'm using for news apps at the Seattle Times has been open sourced. It assumes some proficiency with NodeJS, and is built on top of the grunt-init command.

There are many other newsrooms that have their own scaffolding: NPR has one, and the Tribune often builds its projects on top of Tarbell. Common threads include the ability to load data from CSV or Google Sheets, minifying and templating HTMl with that data, and publishing to S3. My template also does those things, but with some slight differences.

• It runs on top of NodeJS. This means, in turn, that it runs everywhere, unlike Tarbell, which will not work on Windows.
• It has no dependencies outside of itself. I find this helpful--where the NPR template has to call out to an external lessc command to do its CSS processing, I can just load the LESS module directly.
• It is opinionated, but flexible. It assumes you're using AMD modules for your JavaScript, and starts its build at predetermined paths. But it comes with no libraries, for example: instead, Bower is set up so that each project can pull only what it needs, and always have the latest versions.

What do you get from the scaffolding? Out of the box, it sets up a project folder that loads local data, feeds it to powerful templating, starts up a local development server, and watches all your files, rebuilding them whenever you make changes. It'll compile your JavaScript into a single file, with practically no work on your part, and do the same for your LESS files. Once you're done, it'll publish it to S3 for you, too. I've been using it for a project this week, and honestly: it's pretty slick.

If you're working on newroom development, or static app development in general, please feel free to check it out, and I'd appreciate any feedback you might have.