README.md

By Jared Novack (@jarednova), Lukas Gächter (@lgaechter), Linda Gorman (@lggorman), Upstatement and hundreds of other GitHub contributors

Because WordPress is awesome, but the_loop isn't

Timber helps you create fully-customized WordPress themes faster with more sustainable code. With Timber, you write your HTML using the Twig Template Engine separate from your PHP files.

This cleans up your theme code so, for example, your PHP file can focus on being the data/logic, while your Twig file can focus 100% on the HTML and display.

This is what Timber's .twig files look like (from this Hello World example)

{% extends "base.twig" %}
{% block content %}
  <h1 class="big-title">{{ foo }}</h1>
  <h2 class="post-title">{{ post.title }}</h2>
  <img src="{{ post.thumbnail.src }}" />
  <div class="body">
	{{ post.content }}
  </div>
{% endblock %}

Once Timber is installed and activated in your plugins directory, it gives any WordPress theme the ability to take advantage of the power of Twig and other Timber features.

Looking for docs?

• Timber Documentation
• Twig Reference
• Overview / Getting Started Guide
• Video Tutorials

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Installation

The GitHub version of Timber requires Composer and is setup for inclusion within a theme or plugin. If you'd prefer one-click installation for your site, you should use the WordPress.org version.

cd ~/wp-content/themes/my-theme
composer require timber/timber

If your theme/plugin is not setup to pull in Composer's autoload file, you will need to

/* functions.php */
require_once(__DIR__ . '/vendor/autoload.php');

After this line, initialize Timber with

$timber = new \Timber\Timber();

What Now?

Setup the Timber Starter Theme. Once you have that installed in your WordPress setup, continue reading the Getting Started guide to Themeing.

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Mission Statement

Timber is a tool for developers who want to translate their HTML into high-quality WordPress themes through an intuitive, consistent and fully-accessible interface.

• Intuitive: The API is written to be user-centric around a programmer's expectations.
• Consistent: WordPress objects can be accessed through common polymorphic properties like slug, ID and name.
• Accessible: No black boxes. Every effort is made so the developer has access to 100% of their HTML.

What does it look like?

Nothing. Timber is meant for you to build a theme on. Like _s it comes style-free, because you're the style expert. Instead, Timber handles the logic you need to make a kick-ass looking site.

Who is it good for?

Timber is great for any WordPress developer who cares about writing good, maintainable code. It helps teams of designers and developers working together. At Upstatement we made Timber because while our entire team needs to participate in building WordPress sites, not everyone knows the ins-and-outs of the_loop(), codex and PHP (nor should they). With Timber your best WordPress engineer can focus on building the .php files with requests from WordPress and pass the data into .twig files. Once there, designers can easily mark-up data and build out a site's look-and-feel.

Related Projects

• Timber Starter Theme The "_s" of Timber to give you an easy start to the most basic theme you can build upon and customize.
• Timber Debug Bar Adds a debug bar panel that will show you which template is in-use and the data sent to your twig file.
• Timber Dump Extension Debug output with nice formatting.
• TimberPhoton Plug-in to use JetPack's free Photon image manipulation and CDN with Timber.
• Timber CLI A CLI for Timber.
• Timber Sugar A catch-all for goodies to use w Timber.
• Timmy Advanced image manipulation for Timber.
• Twig The template language used by Timber.
• Pine A CLI installer for timber

Projects that use Timber

• Gantry5 a framework for theme development
• Branch Bootstrap + Timber = Branch starter theme!

Helpful Links

• CSS Tricks introduction to Timber by @tjFogarty
• Twig for Timber Cheatsheet by @laras126
• TutsPlus A guide to getting started by @ahmadawais

Support

Please post on StackOverflow under the "Timber" tag. Please use GitHub issues only for specific bugs, feature requests and other types of issues.

Should I use it?

It's MIT-licensed, so please use in personal or commercial work. Just don't re-sell it. Timber is used on tens of thousands of sites (and tons more we don't know about)

Contributing

We love PRs! Read the Contributor Guidelines.

Documentation

The Official Documentation for Timber is generated from the contents of this repository:

• Documentation for classes and functions is auto generated. Any changes to the Reference section of the docs should be made by editing the function’s DocBlock. For inline documentation, we follow the WordPress PHP Documentation Standards.
• To make a change to one of the guides, edit the relevant file in the docs directory.