# Serving SASS files for WordPress theme on IIS

**Date:** 2014-04-02  
**Author:** Kees C. Bakker  
**Categories:** PHP, WordPress  
**Tags:** IIS  
**Original:** https://keestalkstech.com/serving-sass-files-for-wordpress-theme-on-iis/

![Serving SASS files for WordPress theme on IIS](https://keestalkstech.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/1_lpWLZ75HSCAYYQvx0wxYDQ1.jpg)

---

I love [SASS](http://sass-lang.com/). More and more WordPress themes are supporting it. And what’s not to love? Well… it can’t be served directly like CSS. It needs to be pre-compiled before it is served.

Fortunately, there is a PHP SASS compiler that can be used to make PHP compile and serve SASS. I’m using an IIS installation, so I’ll be explaining how it can be done on a Windows machine.

First, [download the latest version of **scssphp**](http://leafo.net/scssphp/) (the .tar.gz can be unzipped with [WinRar](http://www.rarlabs.com/download.htm)). Next extract the *scss.inc.php* from the zip and put it into the root of your application: this is the actual compiler. Create a new file called *scss.php* in the root and add the following script to it:

```php
<?php

//get request URI
$requestUri = $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'];
$lastSlash = strrpos($requestUri,'/');

//Extract directory
$dir = substr($requestUri, 0, $lastSlash);
$dir = $_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'] . str_replace('/', '\\', $dir) . '\\';

//Set 'p' file 
$_GET['p'] = substr($requestUri, $lastSlash + 1);

require "scss.inc.php";

//Process file
scss_server::serveFrom($dir);

?>
```

Now we need to tell IIS to serve the *.scss* files through our script. This can be done by adding a rewrite rule to the web.config. Most WordPress installations will have pretty urls enabled so a web.config is already present. If it is not, you must create it manually.

```xml
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<configuration>
  <system.webServer>
    <rewrite>
      <rules>
        <rule name="scss" patternSyntax="Wildcard">
          <match url="*.scss"/>
          <action type="Rewrite" url="scss.php"/>
        </rule>
        <rule name="wordpress" patternSyntax="Wildcard">
          <match url="*"/>
          <conditions>
            <add input="{REQUEST_FILENAME}" matchType="IsFile" negate="true"/>
            <add input="{REQUEST_FILENAME}" matchType="IsDirectory" negate="true"/>
          </conditions>
          <action type="Rewrite" url="index.php"/>
        </rule>
      </rules>
    </rewrite>
  </system.webServer>
</configuration>
```

And... that's it! The only thing I had to do was change the theme, so it links to the *scss* file instead of the *css* file. A big shout-out to Bas Wildeboer for helping me to get the PHP-part done.