
Show HN: Themes for Bootstrap - coderdude
http://wrapbootstrap.com/
======
nhebb
I like the idea, and I hope it does well. But what I would pay money for is a
series of lessons on how to customize bootstrap. The whole reason I'm using
bootstrap for my site redesign is because:

    
    
      - I can't find off the shelf themes that meet my needs.
      - I want to learn how to do it myself.
      - I want a solid foundation to start with.
    

A codecademy for CSS "cooking" with bootstrap would be great. A quick mover
with good design skills could probably make a decent amount of money in a
short period if they sold tutorials with focused content. _[I'm just throwing
this out there in case someone wants to bite.]_

~~~
ma2rten
You should not start with bootstrap in that case. I think especially in the
beginning when you are learning CSS you should build something from scratch.
Otherwise you have to learn both, CSS and how bootstrap is constructed.

CSS is not hard. I don't consider myself good at css, not at all, but give me
a mockup and I can reproduce it, with a lot of Googling and trail-and-error.
At least for me, though, what is really difficult is to make something from
scratch without a mockup. It might be because I am not much of a visual
thinker. I am a coder after all, not a designer. A professional designer might
already have this mockup in her head. I don't.

So what I need to do is create the mockup in Photoshop first. There I can
experiment, move stuff around, change colors, shadows, etc. When I am done, I
reproduce it in css. I guess when you are either a very strong visual thinker
or you are already very good at css, you don't need Photoshop. Otherwise I
recommend you start with a mockup and then make a pixel-by-pixel reproduction
of it. That way you can solely focus on the How, not the What. If you do that
it's not hard at all, and you don't need a code academy for it. [That said I
like the idea of a code academy for building a website from scratch for non-
coders]

~~~
mattmanser
I will vehemently disagree with you on this, CSS is very, very hard.

And you even admit it yourself without realising it!

Trial-and-error is no way to code something. Programming novices use trial-
and-error. But saying CSS is easy when you're still trial-and-erroring stuff
just shows how incredibly hard it is. It's admitting you don't know what
you're doing. And that's CSS all over. Few people can use CSS to do exactly
what they want and know what they're doing.

Everyone else just finds something that kind of works and do the same thing
over and over.

It's only recently been the case that you can view the source of websites
posted here on HN that aren't a mass of nested divs just to get the layout
right.

~~~
geoffw8
CSS is not "very, very hard" - I learned Rails after HTML css, and its simple
as pie. I wouldn't classify myself as super smart. I just think the structure
is such that is straight forward, <div class="something"> to .something {}

If you can code, then you should really be able to write CSS... and if you
can't code, I don't think any of these products are really targeted at you
anyway.

Edit: tpyo

------
almost
It would be good to be clearer about licenses. It just says "Single Site"
right now but it would be good to have a page that clarifies exactly what you
mean just in case my idea of what that means differs from yours.

Will exclusive and multi-site license options follow?

Also, on your /sell page there's a heading that says sellers earn between 55
and 75% but in the text of that block it says the non-exclusive share is 35%.

Anyway, as I said below this is awesome and I wish you the best of luck.

~~~
coderdude
I've moved this up in the queue. Right now the seller can choose whether an
item is sold with a single or multi-application license, but in the near
future I would like to change that to an option that can be chosen at buy-
time.

As for the earnings text on the sell page, I'm working on cleaning up the
wording there so that it better conveys what I mean.

And thank you!

Edit: Updated the earnings text

------
beck5
This is great. I would love a nicer home page for <http://www.sharelatex.com>.
I looked at ones on theme forest but didn't want one framework for my homepage
and one for everything else. Will defiantly look at what comes up there.

On stealing the css: your market are people who know the effort it takes to
build something and are probably likely to pay $15-$50 for a big time saver.

~~~
coderdude
I hope to get some more sellers on board soon so there's more to offer. I'm
glad most everyone seems to feel the same way about stealing the live
previews. There is honor out there.

~~~
beck5
I've not looked properly but future suport is quite important. I have been
upgrading to bootstrap 2.0 and there are a lot of breaking changes, having
future versions available would be something I would want to see, even if it
requires and upgrade fee.

~~~
coderdude
Upgrading from 1.4.0 to 2.0.0 was kind of a pain. I definitely am on the same
page as you. Sellers attach a version number (of their own invention) to the
items they upload. When a seller comes up with an update to their item they
would upload it and update the version. At which point anyway who has
purchased it in the past would be able to upgrade for free. (I don't like the
idea of buying a theme and then paying to get the latest changes.)

------
pamelafox
I just wrote a blog post on "theming" bootstrap by overriding CSS (as opposed
to using Less, since I use SaSS). Might be useful for people interested in
customizing their Bootstrap: [http://blog.pamelafox.org/2012/02/theming-
twitter-bootstrap-...](http://blog.pamelafox.org/2012/02/theming-twitter-
bootstrap-without-less.html)

------
redslazer
Just wanted to give you a head up. On the /sell page it says earn 55% - 75% on
each sale but then in the paragraph it says you earn 35% if you sell it non-
exclusively.

Edit: Sorry to be annoying but the sign-in link has a padlock icon next to it
which usually indicates a secure connection/SSL neither of which you are
using.

Great concept btw.

~~~
coderdude
Thanks for bringing that up, I'll get that wording fixed right away.

Regarding the padlock icon: That was an item on my todo list that I moved to
"not critical for launch." And then someone mentioned it. :)

------
anderspetersson
So, this is great and all, but:

How are you going to prevent people from stealing the themes instead of buying
them? One can grab the full HTML and CSS from the preview views.

~~~
coderdude
I don't prevent people from stealing the themes. It's a necessary risk.
Without a live preview you'd never want to buy a theme and live previews are
basically standard at this point (see themeforest.net). If someone saves a
theme from the live preview and if it's discovered then the course of action
would be a legal one.

~~~
moconnor
You could use obfuscated minified source for the previews and sell the
original readable CSS and HTML. Everybody needs to customize their theme.

~~~
coderdude
That would be a fantastic way to go about it actually. Thanks for putting it
in my head!

~~~
almost
If it becomes a problem for you and you think there are people who would steal
them without that but pay you with then go for it. But it will make it harder
to evaluate themes for people who do actually want to buy them.

This is an awesome idea by the way. I love the choice on Theme Forest but I
the flexibility of Bootstrap is brilliant too. I'm also using Bootstrap
whenever I prototype anything and being able to just buy and use a theme later
on would be incredibly useful (obviously it's not _quite_ that simple, but it
could be close). I will almost certainly be buying lots of themes from you
assuming you get designs (which I'm sure you will!).

I'm surprised ThemeForest don't have a Bootstrap section yet actually...

~~~
coderdude
True, any obfuscation would make it impossible to judge the quality of the
source. Good point.

I'm surprised that ThemeForest hasn't jumped on this yet either.

~~~
moe
You could perhaps partially obfuscate the code. But it'd probably be tricky to
ensure that at least some interesting parts remain untouched. Perhaps let the
template author markup those areas?

~~~
jtheory
Meh. I'd say don't bother to obfuscate it. There's a real cost, and no obvious
benefit (anyone making a real site would be stupid to steal their theme;
anyone interested in stealing would just steal from a theme purchaser's site
instead of you if you obfuscated).

From a dev's POV - I won't believe you on the elegance & quality of the source
unless I can see it, and that's very much what I'd be interested in paying for
(an elegant/clean/flexible UI base). Obfuscating at all is somewhat like
selling a fabulous custom car but hauling a dirty tarp over it before letting
the prospective buyer get a closer look.

Besides, it's HTML & CSS. De-obfuscating (unless it's seriously mangled, which
seems dangerous) is as easy as copying the DOM and composed CSS from Firebug,
I imagine, or cut/pasting the files into a good editor and auto-formatting.

Or something; I can't say I've ever de-obfuscated a webpage before; when I
check the source, if it's crap I don't keep reading. Which may be part of the
point, here.

------
suresk
Love your idea and really hope you're able to be successful with it. As a
developer with absolutely no design ability, bootstrap + some nice-looking
themes could really improve the way I build websites - and I certainly
wouldn't hesitate to shell out cash for them.

Good luck!

------
aarondf
Very well executed, IMO. Some other people have mentioned that themeforest
doesn't obfuscate and they're doing just fine, which is true, but they also
have additional assets that are needed in addition to CSS. Namely, PSDs.

One way you could increase incentive to buy instead of steal is only show CSS
on the preview, but download the LESS file on purchase (if the author used
LESS). I'd certainly be more interested in a LESS file.

In the end, I wouldn't worry about it too much, like someone said, people who
are gonna pay are gonna pay.

OT: Are you using some sort of "food ipsum" generator for the StackLayer
theme? I love it.

~~~
coderdude
Thank you!

Yes, the additional assets are the big gotchas (especially with themes that
have text embedded in images) and I like the idea about including the LESS
source. I'll get on adding that to the StackLayer theme!

By the way: Veggie Ipsum. It's awesome. <http://veggieipsum.com/>

------
mgkimsal
Can we get some sort of live preview option to see the same site with
different bootstrap themes, similar to csszengarden? Would be very helpful to
see how one similar site will look with different bootstrap themes.

Thanks!

~~~
coderdude
That's not a bad idea. Wouldn't work for everything though. For example, when
the theme uses custom classes or components that aren't part of Bootstrap. But
in general it would be a very handy way to gauge the differences between
styles.

~~~
mgkimsal
It may compel theme writers to adhere to a standard and stretch what they do
to make it more apparent in your marketplace that their themes will require as
little work as possible to integrate.

Thanks.

~~~
noahc
This would be awesome. I bought a theme off of themeforest the other day and
they essentially wrote a mini-cms in js that would have been way to much work
to tear apart and turn it into a static site.

This morning, I'm working on adding a grid framework to another theme I bought
off of themeforest. That's the one thing I hate about themeforest is you can't
see the "bones" of the theme before you buy. I've bought 4 or 5 themes off of
theme forest with about 3/4 of them being of decent quality. With decent
quality being the ease at which I can modify them for my own needs.

------
revorad
This is such an awesome idea. It will be interesting to see how many themes
you get. I would never have thought of making a marketplace like this because
it seems too niche. But I won't be surprised if you prove me wrong!

Shameless plug: I'm trying to get a new community project going, so please
consider sharing this on there - <http://swym.me/>

~~~
alexobenauer
What's the goal / point of swym?

~~~
revorad
It's mostly sharing and discovering cool projects, tools and people.

I explained some more here - <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3579260>

Basically, you know how people often ask on HN how did you make that? What
stack did you use? It's the same thing, but the tags give you a fun way to
find out about other projects built on the same technology. Plus, you might
find other creative people you may not have found otherwise.

~~~
jurre
I love the idea. I think adding a description field to the project and tools
pages would make it a lot more interesting.

~~~
revorad
Thanks! You can add a description to your project after you've created it. I
wanted to keep the initial form as short as possible. I will add a description
to the tool pages as well.

------
robinwarren
great idea, and excellent timing as well tbh. The TW Bootstrap look is getting
very common out there. My site is built on it and I can see the vanilla TW
Bootstrap look ageing very fast.

~~~
coderdude
Yes, a lot of people have started to complain that they can see Bootstrap
everywhere. Here's to fixing that!

~~~
Xion
Seeing Bootstrap everywhere is actually a _good_ thing. It makes me hope that
the Web is finally maturing to the point of having a common, uniform UI
patterns for its applications. If Bootstrap helps to alleviate the design & UX
bonanza that many of the present day web apps still is, it will be just
another stone in its awesomeness bucket.

------
loceng
I was hoping there'd be a free version of this - though with a paid version
you'll certainly get higher-quality options ---- but I can see free versions
being useful enough, where there's not too much customization.

Perhaps have a free section? It would be a good way to get free traffic which
you can use to upsell to paid versions.

~~~
coderdude
That's an interesting idea, and one that I think would work too. A few years
ago I bought an admin template called Adminizio (<http://www.adminizio.com/>).
At first I downloaded the free version and got a feel for it. I like it enough
to buy the full version $50 and I've never regretted it.

Good thinking.

------
vineet
Great idea. But starting with just 1 theme will make it hard to convince
potential customers and potential theme creators to use the site.

Perhaps send an e-mail to a couple of handpicked theme creators from one of
the other sites to come over - maybe even convert some of the themes for free.

~~~
coderdude
Yeah, it is difficult to start any marketplace. A chicken or the egg problem.
I was hoping that by releasing early I could get some sellers on board. It's
considerably harder to get a designer to create a work to sell on a
marketplace that isn't even launched yet or validated by buyers. However, I've
made a couple sales (literally, 2) and hopefully I will get more, enough to
attract the sellers.

I have emailed a few handpicked designers already so I will see what the
response is. :)

~~~
vineet
Offering to convert themes for free to the first few designers (and just give
them money per sale) might help you get out of the chicken/egg problem.

Best of luck with it.

~~~
coderdude
Thanks for the idea, I'll certainly take it into consideration. I could see
that being the 'tipping point' for many sellers since they wouldn't have to do
the work.

------
kingsidharth
Biggest problem with Bootstrap was non-distinct visual design. All sites
created with bootstrap had same loon and feel which is bad for visual
distinction and mind-space.

Themes will be useful in solving that problem. Way to go.

------
ewalk153
The preview page for themes still has the Paypal link to sandbox
<http://wrapbootstrap.com/preview/WB00TO920>

~~~
coderdude
Whoops! Thanks for pointing that out -- I just fixed it.

------
highace
This is a great idea and I'm sure you'll do well. The one template that's
available and your site itself look very well designed.

However - wasn't the whole point of bootstrap to make it easier for developers
to create their _own_ stuff, thus avoiding the need to buy a template? If you
want a templated site, just buy one from ThemeForest, because that's exactly
what you're getting here except it's built around 'standardized' markup
instead of the designer's own.

~~~
coderdude
Thank you.

>>that's exactly what you're getting here except it's built around
'standardized' markup instead of the designer's own

That's kind of the point. :)

------
jbigelow76
It's a good idea, considering the popularity of themeforest I'm not surprised
to see this. But, if you want to charge 20 bucks you'll need to offer multiple
pages of samples, the landing page sample doesn't really tell me what a form
might look like with those theme elements, or blog post, image gallery, etc...

Good luck with it though.

~~~
coderdude
That's a good point. A style guide/reference would be very useful to include
in the live preview. I'll definitely be adding more to the StackLayer theme
and all customers receive updates for free.

Thanks!

------
kolinko
Excellent idea. Too bad that it's just one theme for now, but I'll take a look
at it tomorrow, and might just buy it :)

Good luck!

~~~
coderdude
I released early with just one theme, but I'm adding more soon and we'll see
if some of the people who signed up for selling today upload some items as
well. I'd like to get some competition going!

Thanks and stay tuned :)

------
TomGullen
Is this for landing pages only? I generally think landing pages are a waste of
time in general, however this site seems to address my main criticism of them
which is that start ups invest far too much time in making them. Good luck
with it, looks like a nice well made site!

~~~
coderdude
Nope, the site is for all kinds of themes (Wordpress, ecommerce, blogs, etc.)
and templates (e.g., button packs). A landing page is just a theme I chose to
start out with. Thanks!

------
santa_boy
This is eerie! I was planning to make complete websites with themes using
Bootstrap just yesterday! :-) .. Here is what I launched about an hr back on
my own site! <http://bit.ly/zn9Wxc>

------
aniketpant
Really don't get the point.

Bootstrap is open source. Most of these themes would be paid. (not good for
me)

Don't have much in support of my point, but I would not use this service
unless some really _amazing_ designs are put up.

~~~
mgkimsal
So it's open source. So use it. Just because the source is available doesn't
magically make people able to make really nice looking site designs with it.
However, it does _allow_ some people who are already good with design to make
reusable and largely understandable designs available for your project. And
you can pay for those layouts. People who want nice designs on top of a
bootstrap base win. The designers win. End of story.

Interestingly, you say it's "not good for you", but then you say you'd use the
service if some "amazing" designs were available. I presume "amazing" designs
_would_ be good for you, hence you'll use it.

Not even sure what the point of your comment was, except to say "I don't pay
for stuff" (with a hint of "everything should be open source" seeming to lurk
underneath).

------
andrewcanis
Great idea! I would love a valentines day bootstrap theme.

------
nirvana
I wonder if it isn't a good time in the webs evolution to come up with or
popularize a theme standard, and if bootstrap isn't a good step in that
direction. This might help accelerate adoption and popularity of themes,
especially open sourced themes, saving everyone a lot of time. This is the
kind of thing I don't feel proprietary about at all, and would rather share my
designs with others to improve and extend than re-create the wheel.

I'm working on a web application platform (coffeescript running concurrently
across a cluster of nodes, basically). I'm still working on the backend, but
once it is released publicly, I want to start building out a built-in
frontend. To that goal, I'm planning to ship a web framework built in, and
Bootstrap is the leading candidate right now.

I know popularly you buy themes which are collections of HTML and CSS and that
they make it easy to have a nice layout without having to swipe a 37signals
page-- you just change the content to suit what you want.

I see bootstrap coming from one end- a cohesive framework to make developing
pages easier-- and themes being going a step further-- specific designs for
everything but the content.

And I wonder if it wouldn't be a good idea to have a sort of theme
architecture for bootstrap.

What I'm imagining is that themes could be specified, and developed in such a
way that they could be traded as tar balls and quickly and easily used by
projects. Much the way wordpress themes are standardized and plug into
wordpress, these themes could be standardized and plug into bootstrap. Hell,
the bootstrap page has an almost theme creator that lets you customize
bootstrap. (<http://twitter.github.com/bootstrap/download.html>)

I'd love to have the ability to point my web platform at a github page, and
have it suck in the latest version of an open source theme for people.

I'd love it if themes became a popular open source item. You may think this is
a bad idea, but I see it as taking the framework idea and building another
level on top of it. Sure, some people will just use stock themes, others will
make custom themes.

... and a lot of people will learn web design by taking apart themes and
understanding them.

Does a standard format for bootstrap themes make sense?

(Please don't flame me if I've missed something here- this is an idea, and I
admit to not being a bootstrap expert.)

~~~
BadiPod
Personally I like that Bootstrap is NOT Themed. It's minimalistic and still
very flexible. I believe it should always stay as a BASELINE. I want to build
amazing designs on top of it, and save time by not having to copy code again
and again for round corners, shadows, forms, tables, etc.

~~~
nirvana
Right, I see themes as collections of components. They should be anyway, such
that those individual components can be used, mixed and match, the way
bootstrap gives you components like shadows, forms, rounded corners, etc.

I'm thinking a theme would be a collection of one level higher things like
buttons, menus, a picture showing widget, or whatever.

And each component would have no other dependancies other than bootstrap,
hopefully.

~~~
BadiPod
Agreed

