html5-boilerplate/docs/misc.md

HTML5 Boilerplate homepage | Documentation table of contents

Miscellaneous

• .gitignore
• .editorconfig
• robots.txt
• package.json

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.gitignore

HTML5 Boilerplate includes a basic project-level .gitignore. This should primarily be used to avoid certain project-level files and directories from being kept under source control. Different development-environments will benefit from different collections of ignores.

OS-specific and editor-specific files should be ignored using a "global ignore" that applies to all repositories on your system.

For example, add the following to your ~/.gitconfig, where the .gitignore in your HOME directory contains the files and directories you'd like to globally ignore:

[core]
    excludesfile = ~/.gitignore

• More on global ignores: https://help.github.com/articles/ignoring-files/
• Comprehensive set of ignores on GitHub: https://github.com/github/gitignore

.editorconfig

The .editorconfig file is provided in order to encourage and help you and your team define and maintain consistent coding styles between different editors and IDEs.

By default, .editorconfig includes some basic properties that reflect the coding styles from the files provided by default, but you can easily change them to better suit your needs.

In order for your editor/IDE to apply the properties from the .editorconfig file, you may need to install a plugin.

N.B. If you aren't using the server configurations provided by HTML5 Boilerplate, we highly encourage you to configure your server to block access to .editorconfig files, as they can disclose sensitive information!

For more details, please refer to the EditorConfig project.

robots.txt

The robots.txt file is used to give instructions to web robots on what can be crawled from the website.

By default, the file provided by this project includes the next two lines:

• User-agent: * - the following rules apply to all web robots
• Disallow: - everything on the website is allowed to be crawled

If you want to disallow certain pages you will need to specify the path in a Disallow directive (e.g.: Disallow: /path) or, if you want to disallow crawling of all content, use Disallow: /.

The /robots.txt file is not intended for access control, so don't try to use it as such. Think of it as a "No Entry" sign, rather than a locked door. URLs disallowed by the robots.txt file might still be indexed without being crawled, and the content from within the robots.txt file can be viewed by anyone, potentially disclosing the location of your private content! So, if you want to block access to private content, use proper authentication instead.

For more information about robots.txt, please see:

• robotstxt.org
• How Google handles the robots.txt file

package.json

package.json is used to define attributes of your site or application for use in modern JavaScript development. The full documentation is available if you're interested. The fields we provide are as follows:

• title - the title of your project. If you expect to publish your application to npm, then the name needs to follow certain guidelines and be unique.

• version - indicates the version of your site application using semantic versioning (SemVer)

• description - describes your site.

• scripts - is a JavaScript object containing commands that can be run in a node environment. There are many built-in keys related to the package lifecycle that node understands automatically. You can also define custom scripts for use with your application development. We provide three custom scripts that work with webpack to get you up and running quickly with a bundler for your assets and a simple development server.

  • start serves your index.html with a simple development server

• keywords - an array of keywords used to discover your app in the npm registry

• author - defines the author of a package. There is also an alternative contributors field if there's more than one author.

• license - the license for your application. Must conform to specific rules

• devDependencies - development dependencies for your package. In our case we have several dependencies used by webpack, which we use as a simple development server.