Bruce Lawson recently asked for ways to style a definition list in the common glossary format. This is one way to do it.

Bruce’s original post – css challenge – describes what he is after: a “glossary style” appearance with the term on the left and the definitions on the right. Some terms will have multiple definitions, definitions of varying length, and each new term should appear on a new line. A definition list is semantically correct for this kind of information, so there was to be no fiddling around with the HTML, and the browser requirements were for it to work in all modern browsers and IE 6+.

You can skip straight to the demo where some additional classes are included in the HTML in order to highlight each term-definition association.

The basic HTML

The basic HTML structure is a simple definition list and nothing more. There are some short, long, and multiple definitions for each term.

<h1>Styling definition lists</h1>
<dl>
  <dt>Cheese</dt>
  <dd>
    <p>Velit esse cillum dolore in reprehenderit in voluptate duis aute irure dolor. Consectetur adipisicing elit, excepteur sint occaecat sunt in culpa. Velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat.</p>
    <p>Mollit anim id est laborum. Ut enim ad minim veniam, consectetur adipisicing elit, ullamco laboris nisi. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, sunt in culpa quis nostrud exercitation.</p>
  </dd>
  <dd>yummy!</dd>

  <dt>Building flexibility through spreading knowledge and self-organization, exploiting the productive lifecycle to experience a profound paradigm shift. Through the adoption of a proactive stance, the astute manager can adopt a position at the vanguard.</dt>
  <dd>balderdash</dd>;
  <dd>poppycock</dd>

  <dt>Aardvark</dt>
  <dd>never hurt anyone</dd>
</dl>

The styles

In order to get the required appearance in all browsers I had to use negative margins and a few conditional styles to get IE7 and IE6 to play along.

For the purposes of the demo I’ve placed all the styles in <style> blocks in the head of the document.

<style>
   dl {padding-left:300px;}
   dt {clear:both; float:left; width:260px; padding:10px; margin:0 0 2em -300px; font-weight:bold; color:#686663;}
   dd {float:left; width:100%; padding:10px 0; margin:0 0 2em;}
</styl>
<!--[if lte IE 7]>
<style>
   dt {display:inline; margin-bottom:0;}
   dd {float:none; width:auto;}
</style>
<![endif]-->

That’s it. The widths of the <dt> can be set in ems or percentages if the layout requires. The complete code is available in the demo and you are free to use this code.

This site has been written in HTML5 and used to use WordPress to manage the content. I’ll explain why I used HTML5, describe the structure of the theme templates, and show some of the ways I tried to tame WordPress’s tendency to add mess to the source code.

As this is my personal site I wanted to experiment with using HTML5, CSS3, and WAI-ARIA. All these documents are currently working drafts and subject to change. However, the web documents and applications of the future are going to be written in HTML5 and I wanted to see the benefits of using it to markup static documents. Using CSS 2.1, let alone the CSS3 selectors and properties that some browser vendors have implemented, has many advantages for controlling the presentation of semantically coded documents. For this reason I am not going to avoid using basic CSS 2.1 selectors just to faithfully reproducing this site’s design in IE6. However, I have tried to accommodate IE 7 and IE 8 users by using an HTML5 enabling script so that the new HTML5 elements can be styled in those browsers if users have Javascript enabled.

HTML5 templates

I started with a static prototype of this site developed on my local server. WordPress makes it very easy to create your own templates and, therefore, it is no problem to use HTML5. This theme only has 3 main templates: index, single, and archive. There are of course templates for 404s, attachments, comments, etc., but I won’t discuss them as they are all based on the 3 main templates. All the templates include ARIA roles as an accessibility aide.

The single.php template has this rough structure:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
<head>
  <meta charset="utf-8">
  <title></title>
  <link rel="stylesheet" href="default.css">
</head>

<body>
  <header role="banner"></header>
  <nav role="navigation"></nav>
  <article role="main">
    <header>
      <time datetime="YYYY-MM-DD"></time>
      <h1></h1>
    </header>
    <footer></footer>
  </article>
  <nav></nav>
  <aside role="complementary"></aside>
  <footer role="contentinfo">
    <small></small>
  </footer>
</body>
</html>

The first line of the document is the HTML5 DOCTYPE. The new <article> element contains the content of each post. The same structure is used for the index.php template except that there are several articles displayed on each page and the ARIA role value of main is not used. In contrast, the archive.php template houses all the article excerpts in a <section> element with the ARIA role of main because the list of archived posts is itself the main content of the document.

A clean theme

WordPress tends to add classes, elements, and other bits of code in certain places. I haven’t used any of the WordPress functions that add class names to the body and to elements wrapping a post and also wanted to avoid cluttering the source code with any other unnecessary markup. This required a bit of fiddling around with the theme’s functions.php file. I’m not a PHP developer so this might not be pretty!

Removing actions from wp_head()

WordPress has a hook called wp_head that sits in the header.php of most themes. To avoid it inserting unwanted code into the <head> of the document I used the remove_action function to disable the functions that were responsible. The following code was added to the functions.php file of my theme:

// Remove links to the extra feeds (e.g. category feeds)
remove_action( 'wp_head', 'feed_links_extra', 3 );
// Remove links to the general feeds (e.g. posts and comments)
remove_action( 'wp_head', 'feed_links', 2 );
// Remove link to the RSD service endpoint, EditURI link
remove_action( 'wp_head', 'rsd_link' );
// Remove link to the Windows Live Writer manifest file
remove_action( 'wp_head', 'wlwmanifest_link' );
// Remove index link
remove_action( 'wp_head', 'index_rel_link' );
// Remove prev link
remove_action( 'wp_head', 'parent_post_rel_link', 10, 0 );
// Remove start link
remove_action( 'wp_head', 'start_post_rel_link', 10, 0 );
// Display relational links for adjacent posts
remove_action( 'wp_head', 'adjacent_posts_rel_link', 10, 0 );
// Remove XHTML generator showing WP version
remove_action( 'wp_head', 'wp_generator' );

Source: WPEngineer.com: Cleanup WordPress Header

Removing an empty <span>

If you want to create excerpts you can either write them into the excerpt box or use the <--more--> quicktag in the WordPress editor. I just wanted the first paragraph of my posts to be used as the excerpt and so using the in-editor tag was the most practical approach I was aware of. However, when you do this WordPress will insert an empty <span> in the post’s content. This element has an id so that the area following the excerpt can be targeted by “more” or “continue reading” links. I removed both the empty <span> and the jump link by adding the following code to the functions.php file of the theme:

// removes empty span
function remove_empty_read_more_span($content) {
  return eregi_replace("(<p><span id="more-[0-9]{1,}"></span></p>)", "", $content);
}
add_filter('the_content', 'remove_empty_read_more_span');

Source: Ganda Manurung: Remove Empty Span Tag On WordPress

// removes url hash to avoid the jump link
function remove_more_jump_link($link) {
  $offset = strpos($link, '#more-');
  if ($offset) {
    $end = strpos($link, '"',$offset);
  }
  if ($end) {
    $link = substr_replace($link, '', $offset, $end-$offset);
  }
  return $link;
}
add_filter('the_content_more_link', 'remove_more_jump_link');

Source: WordPress Codex: Customizing the Read More

Displaying images in the excerpt

For posts that display nothing but a photograph (yes, they will be shit but I’m hoping it gets me using my camera a bit more often) I wanted the image to show up in the archives. Equally, if the first paragraph of a post contained a link I wanted that to be preserved. The default the_excerpt() template tag doesn’t allow for this so it needed some modifying. I added a new function, which is just a modified version of the core excerpt function, to the functions.php file and then made sure that the template tag executed this function rather than the one contained in the core WordPress files.

function improved_trim_excerpt($text) {
   if ( '' == $text ) {
      $text = get_the_content('');
      $text = strip_shortcodes( $text );
      $text = apply_filters('the_content', $text);
      $text = str_replace(']]>', ']]>', $text);
      $text = strip_tags($text, '<p><img><a>');
      $excerpt_length = apply_filters('excerpt_length', 55);
      $words = explode(' ', $text, $excerpt_length + 1);
      if (count($words) > $excerpt_length) {
         array_pop($words);
         array_push($words, '[...]');
         $text = implode(' ', $words);
         $text = force_balance_tags($text);
      }
   }
   return $text;
}
remove_filter('get_the_excerpt', 'wp_trim_excerpt');
add_filter('get_the_excerpt', 'improved_trim_excerpt');

Source: Aaron Russell: Improving WordPress’ the_excerpt() template tag

Conditional next/prev links

I prefer not to have empty elements in the markup and so I needed a way to conditionally insert the “Older entries”, “Newer Entries”, etc., links into templates. The solution I’m using here, which isn’t perfect, is to add this to functions.php:

function show_posts_nav() {
  global $wp_query;
  return ($wp_query->max_num_pages > 1);
}

Source: Eric Martin: Conditional navigation links in WordPress

And then to wrap the navigation markup in the templates with the following:

<?php if (show_posts_nav()) : ?>
<nav>
   <ul>
      <li><?php next_posts_link('&#171; Older Entries') ?></li>
      <li><?php previous_posts_link('Newer Entries &#187;') ?></li>
   </ul>
</nav>
<?php endif; ?>

Summary

It’s fairly easy to create a simple site with HTML5 and to use WordPress to deliver it. At the moment there are issues with Internet Explorer because you cannot style HTML5 elements unless you use Javascript. However, HTML5 redefines the meaning of certain elements (such as <dl>, which has become a more versatile “description list”) and allows block elements to be wrapped in a link. Therefore, there is still benefit in using the HTML5 DOCTYPE even if you do not make use of the new elements.

Further reading

1. HTML5 working draft
2. HTML5 differences from HTML4
3. Accessible Rich Internet Applications (WAI-ARIA) 1.0

This week UCL have updated their homepage with a new design that I translated into XHTML, CSS, and Javascript.

UCL will gradually be updating other parts of their website as they move forward. You can read the UCL blog post about their new homepage and the history of the UCL homepage.

I was responsible for producing the XHTML, CSS, and Javascript that makes up the templates for this redesign. The members of UCL’s Web Services team then integrated the templates (and modified them as required) into their CMS.

If you’re using HTML5 elements then you’re probably also using a JavaScript shiv to help make it possible to style those elements in versions of Internet Explorer prior to IE9. But when JavaScript is disabled the accessibility of the content may be affected in these versions of IE. This is one way to provide a more accessible fallback.

The concept is to ensure that all modern browsers are served the default style sheet(s) and that people using older versions of IE only download them if JavaScript is enabled. When JavaScript is not enabled, people using those browsers can be served either no styles at all (as Yahoo! suggests for browsers receiving C-Grade support) or simple fallback styles.

Client-side method: conditional comments

Doing this on the client-side comes at the cost of having to litter your code with proprietary conditional comments. First, it’s necessary to comment out the default style sheet(s) from versions of IE earlier than IE9. All other browsers will be able to read the file(s).

<!--[if ! lt IE 9]><!-->
<link rel="stylesheet" href="/css/default.css">
<!--<![endif]-->

For earlier versions of IE, an HTML5 shiv is included and the necessary link elements are created and added to the DOM using JavaScript. This means that when JavaScript is not enabled in IE7 or IE8 the style sheet will not be present, resulting in an unstyled HTML page. In this example, IE6 won’t be served CSS at all.

<!--[if (IE 7)|(IE 8)]>
<script src="/js/html5.js"></script>
<script>
   (function() {
      var link = document.createElement("link");
      link.rel = "stylesheet";
      link.href = "/css/default.css";
      document.getElementsByTagName("head")[0].appendChild(link);
   }());
</script>
<![endif]-->

To support multiple style sheets, an array and for loop can be used.

<!--[if (IE 7)|(IE 8)]>
<script src="/js/html5.js"></script>
<script>
   (function() {
      var css = [
         '/css/default.css',
         '/css/section.css',
         '/css/custom.css'
      ];
      var i;
      var link = document.createElement('link');
      var head = document.getElementsByTagName('head')[0];
      var tmp;

      link.rel = 'stylesheet';

      for(i = 0; i < css.length; i++){
         tmp = link.cloneNode(true);
         tmp.href = css[i];
         head.appendChild(tmp);
      }
   }());
</script>
<![endif]-->

Thanks to Remy Sharp and Mathias Bynens for helping me to improve this script. Fork it.

Rather than serving unstyled content, it may be preferable to provide some simple fallback styles. This can be done by linking to a separate style sheet wrapped in noscript tags. In this example, IE6 will always use these legacy styles while IE7 and IE8 will do so only when JavaScript is disabled.

<!--[if lt IE 9]>
<noscript>
   <link rel="stylesheet" href="/css/legacy.css">
</noscript>
<![endif]-->

You may wish to use a generic style sheet, such as “Universal IE6 CSS”, or spend a few minutes crafting your own and ensuring that the typography and colours approximate those in the default style sheet.

The complete example code is as follows:

<!--[if ! lt IE 9]><!-->
<link rel="stylesheet" href="/css/default.css">
<!--<![endif]-->

<!--[if (IE 7)|(IE 8)]>
<script src="/js/html5.js"></script>
<script>
   (function() {
      var link = document.createElement("link");
      link.rel = "stylesheet";
      link.href = "/css/default.css";
      document.getElementsByTagName("head")[0].appendChild(link);
   }());
</script>
<![endif]-->

<!--[if lt IE 9]>
<noscript>
   <link rel="stylesheet" href="/css/legacy.css">
</noscript>
<![endif]-->

Server-side method: user-agent string detection

The drawbacks of current client-side approaches to IE fallbacks is that they are IE-specific, make extensive use of conditional comments, and have to use JavaScript to create or rewrite link elements. This blog makes use of an alternative approach: server-side user-agent detection. It was inspired by Yahoo!’s Graded Browser Support strategy – created by Nate Koechley – which recommends that all CSS and JavaScript is withheld from legacy browsers (not limited to IE).

The source code in the head of this blog changes when viewed in modern browsers, IE8, and legacy browsers that are incapable of styling HTML5 elements (e.g. Firefox 2) or lack adequate CSS2.1 support (e.g. IE7).

Browsers are assumed to be capable; there is no need to update the script every time a new browser is released. Only when a browser is deemed to be severely incapable is it added to a “blacklist” and served simple styles to ensure that the accessibility of the content is maintained. This is the method I prefer, although it does require more time upfront.

Research into improving the cross-browser consistency of both the “clearfix” and “overflow:hidden” methods of containing floats. The aim is to work around several bugs in IE6 and IE7.

This article introduces a new hack (with caveats) that can benefit the “clearfix” methods and the new block formatting context (NBFC) methods (e.g. using overflow:hidden) of containing floats. It’s one outcome of a collaboration between Nicolas Gallagher (that’s me) and Jonathan Neal.

If you are not familiar with the history and underlying principles behind methods of containing floats, I recommend that you have a read of Easy clearing (2004), Everything you know about clearfix is wrong (2010), and Clearfix reloaded and overflow:hidden demystified (2010).

Consistent float containment methods

The code is show below and documented in this GitHub gist. Found an improvement or flaw? Please fork the gist or leave a comment.

Micro clearfix hack: Firefox 3.5+, Safari 4+, Chrome, Opera 9+, IE 6+

.cf {
  /* for IE 6/7 */
  *zoom: expression(this.runtimeStyle.zoom="1", this.appendChild(document.createElement("br")).style.cssText="clear:both;font:0/0 serif");
  /* non-JS fallback */
  *zoom: 1;
}

.cf:before,
.cf:after {
  content: "";
  display: table;
}

.cf:after {
  clear: both;
}

Overflow hack (NBFC): Firefox 2+, Safari 2+, Chrome, Opera 9+, IE 6+

.nbfc {
  overflow: hidden;
  /* for IE 6/7 */
  *zoom: expression(this.runtimeStyle.zoom="1", this.appendChild(document.createElement("br")).style.cssText="clear:both;font:0/0 serif");
  /* non-JS fallback */
  *zoom: 1;
}

The GitHub gist also contains another variant of the clearfix method for modern browsers (based on Thierry Koblentz’s work). It provides greater visual consistency (avoiding edge-case bugs) for even older versions of Firefox.

The only difference from existing float-containment methods is the inclusion of a CSS expression that inserts a clearing line-break in IE 6 and IE 7. Jonathan and I found that it helps to resolve some of the visual rendering differences that exist between these browsers and more modern ones. First I’ll explain what some of those differences are and when they occur.

Containing floats in IE 6/7

In IE 6 and IE 7, the most common and robust method of containing floats within an element is to give it “layout” (find out more: On having Layout). Triggering “layout” on an element in IE 6/7 creates a new block formatting context (NBFC). However, certain IE bugs mean that previous float containment methods don’t result in cross-browser consistency. Specifically, this is what to expect in IE 6/7 when creating a NBFC:

1. The top- and bottom-margins of non-floated child elements are contained within the ancestor element that has been given “layout”. (Also expected in other browsers when creating a NBFC)
2. The bottom-margins of any right-floated descendants are contained within the ancestor. (Also expected in other browsers when creating a NBFC)
3. The bottom-margins of any left-floated children are not contained within the ancestor. The margin has no effect on the height of the ancestor and is truncated, having no affect outside of the ancestor either. (IE 6/7 bug)
4. In IE 6, if the right edge of the margin-box of a left-floated child is within 2px of the left edge of the content-box of its NBFC ancestor, the float’s bottom margin reappears and is contained within the parent. (IE 6 bug)
5. Unwanted white-space can appear at the bottom of a float-container. (IE 6/7 bug)

There is a lack of consistency between IE 6/7 and other browsers, and between IE 6 and IE 7. Thanks to Matthew Lein for his comment that directed me to this IE 6/7 behaviour. It was also recently mentioned by “Suzy” in a comment on Perishable Press.

IE 6/7’s truncation of the bottom-margin of left-floats is not exposed in many of the test-cases used to demonstrate CSS float containment techniques. Using an IE-only CSS expression helps to correct this bug.

The CSS expression

Including the much maligned <br style="clear:both"> at the bottom of the float-container, as well as creating a NBFC, resolved all these inconsistencies in IE 6/7. Doing so prevents those browsers from collapsing (or truncating) top- and bottom-margins of descendant elements.

Jonathan suggested inserting the clearing line-break in IE 6/7 only, using CSS expressions applied to fictional CSS properties. The CSS expression is the result of many iterations, tests, and suggestions. It runs only once, the first time an element receives the associated classname.

*zoom: expression(this.runtimeStyle.zoom="1", this.appendChild(document.createElement("br")).style.cssText="clear:both;font:0/0 serif");

It is applied to zoom, which is already being used to help contain floats in IE 6/7, and the use of the runtimeStyle object ensures that the expression is replaced once it has been run. The addition of font:0/0 serif prevents the occasional appearance of white-space at the bottom of a float-container. And the * hack ensures that only IE 6 and IE 7 parse the rule.

It’s worth noting that IE 6 and IE 7 parse almost any string used as CSS property. An earlier iteration used the entirely fictitious properties “-ms-inject” or “-ie-x” property to exploit this IE behaviour.

*-ie-x: expression(this.x||(this.innerHTML+='<br style="clear:both;font:0/0">',this.x=1));

However, this expression is evaluated over and over again. Using runtimeStyle instead avoids this. Sergey Chikuyonok also pointed out that using innerHTML destroys existing HTML elements that may event handlers attached to them. By using document.createElement and appendChild you can insert the new element without removing all the events attached to other descendant elements.

Containing floats in more modern browsers

There are two popular methods to contain floats in modern browsers. Creating a new block formatting context (as is done in IE 6/7 when hasLayout is triggered) or using a variant of the “clearfix” hack.

Creating a NBFC results in an element containing any floated children, and will prevent top- and bottom-margin collapse of non-floated children. When combined with the enhanced IE 6/7 containment method, it results in consistent cross-browser float containment.

The other method, known as “clearfix”, traditionally used a single :after pseudo-element to clear floats in a similar fashion to a structural, clearing HTML line-break. However, to prevent the top-margins of non-floats from collapsing into the margins of their float-containing ancestor, you also need to use the :before pseudo-element. This is the approach taken in Thierry Koblentz’s “clearfix reloaded”. In contemporary browsers, the micro clearfix hack is also suitable.

The method presented in this article should help improve the results of cross-browser float containment, whether you predominantly use “clearfix” or the NBFC method. The specific limitations of both the “clearfix” and various NBFC methods (as outlined in Thierry’s articles) remain.

Problems

Using a CSS expression to change the DOM in IE 6/7 creates problems of its own. Obviously, the DOM in IE 6/7 is now different to the DOM in other browsers. This affects any JavaScript DOM manipulation that may depend on :last-child or appending new children.

This is still an experimental work-in-progress that is primarily research-driven rather than seeking to become a practical snippet of production code. Any feedback, further testing, and further experimentation from others would be much appreciated.

Thanks to these people for contributing improvements: Jonathan Neal, Mathias Bynens, Sergey Chikuyonok, and Thierry Koblentz.

This is how I am deploying the build of my static website to staging and production domains. It requires basic use of the CLI, Git, and SSH. But once you’re set up, a single command will build and deploy.

TL;DR: Push the static build to a remote, bare repository that has a detached working directory (on the same server). A post-receive hook checks out the files in the public directory.

Prerequisites

• A remote web server to host your site.
• SSH access to your remote server.
• Git installed on your remote server (check with git --version).
• Generate an SSH key if you need one.

On the server

Set up password-less SSH access

First, you need to SSH into your server, and provide the password if prompted.

ssh user@hostname

If there is no ~/.ssh directory in your user’s home directory, create one: mkdir ~/.ssh.

Next, you need to copy your public SSH key (see “Generate an SSH key” above) to the server. This allows you to connect via SSH without having to enter a password each time.

From your local machine – assuming your public key can be found at ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub – enter the following command, with the correct user and hostname. It will append your public key to the authorized_keys file on the remote server.

ssh user@hostname 'cat >> ~/.ssh/authorized_keys' < ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub

If you close the connection, and then attempt to establish SSH access, you should no longer be prompted for a password.

Create the remote directories

You need to have 2 directories for each domain you want to host. One for the Git repository, and one to contain the checked out build.

For example, if your domain were example.com and you also wanted a staging environment, you’d create these directories on the server:

mkdir ~/example.com ~/example.git

mkdir ~/staging.example.com ~/staging.example.git

Initialize the bare Git repository

Create a bare Git repository on the server. This is where you will push the build assets to, from your local machine. But you don’t want the files served here, which is why it’s a bare repository.

cd ~/example.git
git init --bare

Repeat this step for the staging domain, if you want.

Write a post-receive hook

A post-receive hook allows you to run commands after the Git repository has received commits. In this case, you can use it to change Git’s working directory from example.git to example.com, and check out a copy of the build into the example.com directory.

The location of the working directory can be set on a per-command basis using GIT_WORK_TREE, one of Git’s environment variables, or the --work-tree option.

cat > hooks/post-receive
#!/bin/sh
WEB_DIR=/path/to/example.com

# remove any untracked files and directories
git --work-tree=${WEB_DIR} clean -fd

# force checkout of the latest deploy
git --work-tree=${WEB_DIR} checkout --force

Make sure the file permissions on the hook are correct.

chmod +x hooks/post-receive

If you need to exclude some files from being cleaned out by Git (e.g., a .htpasswd file), you can do that using the --exclude option. This requires Git 1.7.3 or above to be installed on your server.

git --work-tree=${WEB_DIR} clean -fd --exclude=<pattern>

Repeat this step for the staging domain, if you want.

On your local machine

Now that the server configuration is complete, you want to deploy the build assets (not the source code) for the static site.

The build and deploy tasks

I’m using a Makefile, but use whatever you feel comfortable with. What follows is the basic workflow I wanted to automate.

1. Build the production version of the static site.

   make build
   

2. Initialize a new Git repo in the build directory. I don’t want to try and merge the new build into previous deploys, especially for the staging domain.

   git init ./build
   

3. Add the remote to use for the deploy.

   cd ./build
   git remote add origin ssh://user@hostname/~/example.git
   

4. Commit everything in the build repo.

   cd ./build
   git add -A
   git commit -m "Release"
   

5. Force-replace the remote master branch, creating it if missing.

   cd ./build
   git push -f origin +master:refs/heads/master
   

6. Tag the checked-out commit SHA in the source repo, so I can see which SHA’s were last deployed.

   git tag -f production
   

Using a Makefile:

BUILD_DIR := ./build
STAGING_REPO = ssh://user@hostname/~/staging.example.git
PROD_REPO = ssh://user@hostname/~/example.git

install:
    npm install

# Deploy tasks

staging: build git-staging deploy
    @ git tag -f staging
    @ echo "Staging deploy complete"

prod: build git-prod deploy
    @ git tag -f production
    @ echo "Production deploy complete"

# Build tasks

build: clean
    # whatever your build step is

# Sub-tasks

clean:
    @ rm -rf $(BUILD_DIR)

git-prod:
    @ cd $(BUILD_DIR) && 
    git init && 
    git remote add origin $(PROD_REPO)

git-staging:
    @ cd $(BUILD_DIR) && 
    git init && 
    git remote add origin $(STAGING_REPO)

deploy:
    @ cd $(BUILD_DIR) && 
    git add -A && 
    git commit -m "Release" && 
    git push -f origin +master:refs/heads/master

.PHONY: install build clean deploy git-prod git-staging prod staging

To deploy to staging:

make staging

To deploy to production:

make prod

Using Make, it’s a little bit more hairy than usual to force push to master, because the cd commands take place in a sub-process. You have to make sure subsequent commands are on the same line. For example, the deploy task would force push to your source code’s remote master branch if you failed to join the commands with && or ;!

I push my site’s source code to a private repository on BitBucket. One of the nice things about BitBucket is that it gives you the option to prevent deletions or history re-writes of branches.

If you have any suggested improvements, let me know on Twitter.

The Home Ministry had on Thursday allowed chariot construction with a condition that no religious congregation should take place around the Ratha Khala.

Of the 1,089 new cases, Mumbai accounted for 748, with a cumulative tally of 12,142. With 75 new cases, Pune district’s tally has risen to 2,537.

The previous night, they had called up relatives in Madhya Pradesh to say they were in a helpless state