Creating a Release

These steps assume you’re utilizing Tower.

  1. Make sure Git Flow is set up in Tower if that’s the app you use.
  2. Stop all grunt processes you might have running to avoid compiling any further by pressing OPT+C in your code editor or OS’ Terminal.
  3. Make sure your local develop and main (or, if an outdated project: master) branch is up to date.
  4. Select “Start release” from the Git Flow button in Tower, and name it with your new release number[1.0.1., for example]. This creates a new “Release” tag branch.
    • You should not have any changes you need to stash. If you do, commit them to develop first.
  5. Version bump your theme [see Versioning below if you don’t know how] and update CHANGELOG.md with a brief list of changes. Copy that[you’ll need it in a second].
  6. Commit to the release branch with the following message: “Version bump to [your new version number here; #.#.#.]”
  7. Select “Finish Release” from the Git Flow button in Tower.
  8. Paste in your changes from CHANGELOG.md into the Tag Message area in the Finish Release screen.
  9. Both master/main and develop will update. Push changes from both branches to Github.
  10. Finally, in Github, create a new release using the same version number as the tag, and past in the changes from CHANGELOG.md.

See it in Action

Theme Versioning

How to version bump your theme

You can force your CSS and Javascript to refresh in your theme by updating your theme version. When you update your theme version, the framework uses a process called cache busting to make sure browsers know there is a new version of the CSS and Javascript available.

Update the version number

You’ll need to update the theme version in one place: package.json.

  1. In your projects package.json file: increment the version number appropriately.
  2. For this example, we’ll assume we’re making a minor update from the first big release of the theme. That means we’ll be going from 1.0.0 to 1.0.1.
  3. Save package.json with the adjustment. In this case:  "version": "1.0.1",
  4. Regenerate Assets: In your code editor or OS terminal, type in the grunt version command and hit RETURN. Doing this will apply the new version number in package.json to your projects SCSS, Javascript, and functions.php file.
  5. Type in one final grunt build to compile everything and update the projects CSS files.
  6. Now that the new version number has been applied, update changelog.md with the version number[Example: ## 1.0.1] and a few bullets in high-level detail (referencing issue numbers) what was coded or adjusted..

And just like that: you’ve updated a projects version number!