WordPress themes have a tendency to quickly get large, disorganized, and unmanageable (i.e. file soup). NOUVEAU attempts to solve this problem by using a clean, standardized file structure. This chapter will quickly explain the purpose of each of the folders and files in NOUVEAU‘s root directory.

Root Folders

assets

As you might have guessed, the assets folder contains all the various site assets. This includes (compiled & minified) CSS, Javascripts, web fonts, images, and language files.

bower_components

The bower_components folder contains all the Bower components found in the SASS version of Zurb Foundation for Sites. This is also where you will find any original, un-minified (dev) files.

layout

The layout folder lets you keep your header.php and footer.php files out of the way. This is also helpful for those cases when you need to juggle multiple header and/or footer files.

nv

The nv folder contains all the files and folders for the NV library. This is the meat and potatoes of NOUVEAU, where most of the magic happens.

Read more about the NV library →

overrides

The overrides folder contains all your admin-selectable page templates.

parts

The parts folder contains any template-oriented code fragments.

About the theme root folder…

Although the theme root will technically continue to work exactly as it always has, in NOUVEAU the root should generally only be used for full-page template files. Use the parts folder for any partials, or layout for headers and footers.

Of course, you’ll find a few other files in the root as well, as WordPress convention makes it impossible to safely remove or relocate them. Let’s briefly cover some of the key root files…

Root Files

archive.php

The archive.php file is a standard WordPress template for archive pages.

config.codekit

This is a preconfigured CodeKit project file for anyone who wants to use CodeKit as their SASS/JS compiler. If you are not using CodeKit, you can safely delete this file.

functions.php

functions.php is a required WordPress theme file. By default, it loads and initializes the entire NV class and namespace (which is responsible for all NOUVEAUs back-end magic).

index.php

The index.php file is a standard WordPress page template, and is used by WordPress when no more-specific template is available.

README.md

This is simply a Github-friendly version of a WordPress standard readme.txt file. It can be safely deleted.

style.css

The style.css file is a required WordPress theme file. Since NOUVEAU works best when used with the SASS version of Foundation, this contains no actual CSS by default… but it does contain mandatory metadata which is required by WordPress (such as theme name, author, version, etc).

You should work in style.css only if you are planning on using regular CSS instead of SASS.

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This page was last updated on April 11, 2016 - it is currently considered COMPLETE.