Question

I am new to WordPress, but need to use it so I can add a jQuery Plug-In to a github repository. The WordPress instructions at https://github.com/jquery/plugins.jquery.com are confusing to a beginner.

In particular, the instructions for Redirecting the WordPress install to use the “web-base-template” allude me (I am a Windows user). I am also confused on how to “Activate the plugins-jquery-com theme”.

Please note that I do understand the jQuery Plug-In site is still under construction.

Any help on either of these issues is appreciated.

Answer 1

Replacing wp-content

In particular, the instructions for Redirecting the WordPress install to use the “web-base-template” allude me (I am a Windows user).

They’re telling you to delete the wp-content folder that comes with WordPress and replace it with their own, by making wp-content a symbolic link to web-base-template/wordpress/wp-content. If you’re on Windows then you don’t have symbolic links. I wonder if this will work at all on Windows, because it looks like there are symbolic links in the jquery/web-base-template repo. I was going to suggest that you try setting up your directory stucture something like this…

docroot
  wordpress
  base
  flat
  themes

…then copy web-base-template/wordpress/wp-content to wordpress/wp-content. But, if the jquery/web-base-template software is built to be dependent on things like symbolic links, I don’t know if you’ll be able to get it to work in Windows. You could try copying things around to eliminate symbolic links, e.g. copy web-base-template/themes to wordpress/wp-content/themes, but I’m not sure if you’d be able to maintain the necessary relationships between directories for relative paths to continue to work, or if other things would prevent it from working. I imagine that would also make it harder to be able to update from the jquery/web-base-template repo in the future.

Activating theme

I am also confused on how to “Activate the plugins-jquery-com theme”.

Once you followed their preceeding instructions, in WordPress Admin > Appearance > Themes you’d have the option to activate the plugins-jquery-com theme, to apply the theme to your site.

Recommendations

I recommend that you try doing a standard WordPress install first, and also try installing and activating a theme , just to become more familiar with the WordPress part of it before attempting to follow the plugins.jquery.com instructions. I think that would be a good idea anyway, but even more so because the plugins.jquery.com stuff does not work within the standard WordPress directory structure. It’s using its own custom directory structure and replacing WordPress’s wp-content directory with a link into that custom structure.

I know it’s not your question, but perhaps you should consider running a Linux installation (e.g. Ubuntu) in a virtual machine and do the WordPress installation there. I realize that is probably also more extra work, on top of dealing with WordPress, to accomplish the jQuery work you’re really trying to do.