Backboned v2 is the follow-up to Backboned — an AJAX-Wordpress-theme powered by Backbone.js. I decided to create a new repository for this one, as the differences in the concept and the code are too large.

For usage go into your terminal and do …

$ cd path/to/backboned-v2
$ bower install

For further development install the Node-dependencies as well …

$ npm install

Visit the Demo

Backboned v2 is a mixture of Require.js for modularization and script loading, Backbone.js as a client-side MVC and Mustache for templating (client- and server-side). While using the History-API, Backbone.js fetches the JSON-data and renders it into the DOM. On the server-side a controller sends the data due to the request type. There are three different types of requests:

1. The classical, synchronous request gets the website frame (with templates inside the DOM), the javascripts and the styles.
2. The asynchronous request gets the page's data in JSON-format.
3. The request with $_GET['_escaped_fragment_']-parameter set, gets a static version of the page. Mustache is used on the server-side for rendering the page.

With this approach, the hashbang-method for pointing crawlers to the static content is used without hashbang-URIs.

Older browsers, that don't support the History-API, always make a round-trip after each anchor click. In the moment I'm not planning to include a workaround with hash-fragment-URIs for the old ones.

It's a way to serve the static content of a client-side rendered Javascript-application and make it thereby possible for search engines to crawl the application's content (read more about it here).

But in contrast to the specification Backboned v2 doesn't make use of hashbang-URIs. The _escaped_fragment_-parameter is just a vehicle for identifying requests made by search engine crawlers.

Download the repo, put the folder into the wp-content/themes/-directory of your Wordpress-installation and make sure, the cache-folder is writeable. Otherwise Mustache will have to render a new template each time an _escaped_fragment_-request comes. This may really slow things down!

Backboned v2 is in a really early state. Furthermore it's more like a proof-of-concept — is it possible to ajaxify a Wordpress-site with Backbone.js?! That's why you can't treat it like one of the fancy, blown-up themes from the official Wordpress-theme-directory (no disrespect!).

But if you're a developer and you're looking for this exact combination — Wordpress + Backbone.js — then you're in the right spot. Download it and take it as a base for your own work.

Yeah, I like this question. Kind of …

I'm a frontend-developer from Hanover, Germany. You can follow me on twitter (@Herschel_R) or visit my blog. You can even do both.

Right here!

Copyright 2014 Emanuel Kluge

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