Comment by avolcano | Hacker News Reader

Comment by avolcano | Hacker News Reader

The sad part of this is that it's so easy to make your Bootstrap site look a little different, even for non-designers.

I'm sure the idea here is "oh, I'm just making a quick MVP, or even a pre-MVP, or a weekend project, and Bootstrap makes the design super easy!" But if you're not going to change it at all, you might as well stick with browser defaults and not include a stylesheet at all - at this point, uncustomized Boostrap looks just as tacky as a site that was black serif text on a white background with blue and purple links.

It's easy to fix, and it's fun. Just take an hour to experiment - your site deserves it. Change up the fonts! Get a nice header font, especially if you're using a big "Hero" badge. Look at the Google Web Font gallery for some inspiration. Get some unique colors - different shades for different elements, build a nice visual hierarchy.

Drop the top nav bar, unless you're doing docs or something that could actually use it. It looks a bit tacky, especially "position: fixed", when it's unnecessary.

Now, on the other hand, you don't have to change everything. Leave the button gradients as they are, the grid system isn't exactly going to stick out, etc. You just need the overall look of your site to be unique - individual elements don't matter as much. http://www.savng.com/ is built with Bootstrap, but you couldn't tell it unless you really were looking (and thus noticed the "Add a deal" button and the pill navs at the bottom).

Just be a bit different. It's easy, and rewarding.

I think the point that an uncustomized Bootstrap looking just as tacky as a plain html site is only true for people who hang around on HN or similar sites and so see many different sites using Bootstrap. For your average Joe on the internet, a Bootstrap-ped site will look much more professional and less tacky than a plain html site. So depending on your target audience, there might not be much motivation to spend any time customizing your site.

Bingo, give this man (or woman, or whatever) a cookie. Not everybody is like us, scouring the internet all day long for new startups and clicking every interesting link that shows up on HN. The average Joe off the street has probably seen 2 bootstrap based sites in his life, and has no idea what bootstrap is, and couldn't care less that a site he's using looks nearly identical to 3000 other sites that he'll most likely never visit.

This whole "bootstrap backlash" is just a storm in a teacup and a waste of bandwidth.

That is the way the Internet works.

1. Product, hardware or software, gains the hearts and minds of hackers everywhere. 2. Backlash.

This. 100 times this. For the people who actually matter (for non design/web related projects).... the customers, they do not even notice. If you aren't going after designers, or web devs themselves, bootstrap looks very professional....and I for one, am not here to stroke designers egos, but to make money.

+1 (and a cookie). Average Joe is used to seeing sites like http://www.universityinnfresno.com/ or http://www.sunnyvalemetro.org/ and so, a clean site based on Bootstrap is a ton better than most of what he comes across. The # of Bootstrap-based sites is a tiny, tiny sliver of all sites out there and no one other than your dedicated HN-reader is going to come across a 2nd Bootstrap site the same day.

Heck, I hang around on HN a lot and still think that the default Bootstrap theme looks great. Sure, a little variety wouldn't hurt and I'd probably change some stuff (like some of the colors) before deploying a real project with it but it looks and works great and it's better than anything I could make as a programmer.

Hey! I am the owner/creator/customer support/janitor/one-man-wrecking-crew of Savng.com.

I am pleasantly surprised to see it mentioned as a good example of Bootstrap based sites. On a unrelated note, I am not sure how you found it since I have really advertised it yet :o

To echo the same sentiment as avolcano, Bootstrap can be easily modified both via Less or CSS. And this is coming from someone who has rudimentary knowledge in both. A little change here and there can go a long way in differentiating your site from all the other bootstrap clone.

Here are a few low hanging fruits:

1) Colors -- Change the color of the top nav bar, links, text, and etc, as color has a tremendous affect on the look and feel of your site.

2) Font - Changing fonts is easy with Google Web Fonts and font hosting services like Typekit. Like color, it also affects the look and your feel of your site.

3) Laytout - Experiment and try different layouts, 1 column, 2 column, 3 columns and etc. Look at various sites within the same niche (and outside of your niche) for inspirations.

Here are some great resources that I've used in making my site:

1. Google Web Fonts

2. Typekit

3. Site Inspire

4. Siiimple

5. Grid Based

6. Minimal Exhibit

7. Design seeds enclosed (this is a godsend if you don't have a back ground in color theory like me)

8. Little Big Details

It's easy to tweak the Bootstrap defaults, but trying to keep things as cohesive as the defaults can lead you down the rabbit hole of dependencies. BS 2.0 is a big step up, but I've found that playing only with the values in variables.less doesn't cut it quite yet.

I've tried to hit a sweet spot with Bootswatch (http://bootswatch.com), keeping it a quick-start solution for hackers while adding variety to the defaults.

> it's so easy to make your Bootstrap site look a little different

I think the problem is that it's not very easy. And that's why you see so little variation (combined with a certain amount of laziness, of course). Editing the CSS directly is pretty much impossible for mere mortals. And of you're not familiar with LESS and compiling styles, you're going to have trouble.

It's not hard at all. You don't need to recompile with LESS - just have a separate style sheet which overrides the default bootstrap one in selected areas.

> The sad part of this is that it's so easy to make your Bootstrap site look a little different, even for non-designers.

You have to redo your changes for each new Bootstrap version, right? AFAIK, Bootstrap is not themeable and you better extend it than change it.

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