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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-12T11:45:37+00:00

Does anyone know of a good way to automatically run certain file types through

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Does anyone know of a good way to automatically run certain file types through a processing script on upload? I’m trying to accomplish automatically minifying CSS and Javascript when I upload them to the server, keeping a nice, human-readable version on the local side while keeping a minified one on the server. I’m currently using WinSCP on Windows, which is scriptable to some degree but might not be scriptable enough. I’d probably need some kind of cobbled-together solution, so don’t be afraid to suggest something with duct tape in it; however, I do need to do the minification on my local computer and upload the squished file, since I use shared hosting and can’t install junk on the server.

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    I recommend creating a makefile to solve this particular problem, here’s a quick and dirty makefile I’m using for a site of mine:

    PUBDIR=../../static/js/
OUTDIR=./build/
COMPRESSOR=../yui/build/yuicompressor-2.4.2.jar
ARGS=
VPATH=${OUTDIR}
INST_TARGETS=${OUTDIR}jgblue.js

jgblue.js: combined.js
    java -jar ${COMPRESSOR} ${ARGS} ${OUTDIR}$< -o ${OUTDIR}$@

combined.js: main.js listview.js tabs.js
    cat $^ > ${OUTDIR}$@

.PHONY: install

install:
    cp ${INST_TARGETS} ${PUBDIR}

    Then all you have to type is:

    make && make install

    First it takes all of your development files and concatenates them into a single file, then the concatenated file gets compressed and copied into your public directory. I’m using YUICompressor for compression, it works quite well.

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