Every Fucking Bootstrap Website Ever (2019) (opens in new tab)

HEY LOOK, IT'S EVERY SUPERMARKET EVER. Huge automatic glass doors, shopping carts, aisles with stuff on shelves. So fucking creative.

Not even close. We're missing at least 27MB of carousel images, an entire mp4 on loop, a 4k 4000x4000 png being displayed at 320x320 and few MB of analytics.

This is amusing as a developer, but there's a reason why Bootstrap is still a thing. It works. And I don't even really like it, to be quite honest. Yet in terms of what it's designed to do, it succeeds. The public doesn't know what Bootstrap is and, with a couple tweaks to the colors and border radii, they won't even notice that they're on a site that's nearly identical to a millon+ other sites.

This conflates websites as a medium of art or personal expression vs websites as a medium of business communication. For the latter, I just want to get the point across quickly and painlessly. For the former, everyone is welcome to design whatever they want and consume as much time is required.

I'd probably appreciate this humor more if I hadn't experienced the web before design frameworks existed. Bootstrap was a step in the right direction, and while I don't think anyone owes it any level of respect for that, I respect it. And if you've ever had to do literal 'pixel pushing' as part of your job, these frameworks were a godsend. Things were mostly lined up well or could be made to easily, and if anyone had a problem with the way things were lined up, you could blame it on Bootstrap, etc.

Also, people can make uninspired designs with just about any framework.

Shouldn't there be a popup to subscribe to a newsletter before scrolling 10% of the content?

Bottom line of the source: (don't go there, it's an adsite now or something.)

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The original rant from 6 years ago is here.

https://devrant.com/rants/75712/http-adventurega-me-bootstra...

It would have been nice if they'd have provided a download link or github repo so I could use this as a template to quickly launch new sites.

Just needs a stock photo of some business people shaking hands, and maybe a pic of a laptop with some code and it's all set.

This takes me back. Around 2014, back when I had no idea how to code, I wanted to make websites. I knew that HTML was a language used to make websites, so I tried to learn that. After a few failed attempts at understanding what I could all do with HTML and CSS, I looked into bootstrap. I knew nothing about it, but it was used on my favorite forum at the time, so it must be good. Looking into bootstrap led me to find templates. In fact, this is the exact template I first used for my personal home page.

It was through this template that I fell in love with just making things, even if it wasn't original, or groundbreaking, it felt good to start digging into code, understanding the recipe behind the product. Here I am now, working on full-fledged software, happier than ever in what I'm doing, and it all started because of "this fucking template".

This template looks great actually. I think I'll use it for my next random website project.

Who cares? Function over form.

The point of Bootstrap was to "make the default web beautiful". The better question is the poster feels the need to piss on everyone else's work.

Who cares? If it works, use it.

I recently grabbed a CSS framework that would take care of 95% of the styling I need for a prototype. Half of the reason for selecting Bulma is that it looks slightly different than Bootstrap. The same complaint applies, but I just want to work on the functionality right now :shrug:

Client: "I want a website for $299."

Me: "Sure, here, allow me to spend 5 weeks, 40 hours a week, developing a custom website for you. Wait, no, here is your cookie cutter website that I slapped together in 30 minutes. We good?"

Client: "No. I read this article that was called "HEY LOOK, IT'S EVERY BOOTSTRAP WEBSITE EVER" so I want more than a cookie cutter template. Please spend 5 weeks, 40 hours a week, and give me a fantastic website for $399."

Me: "OK. Sounds reasonable after all."

As much as I like custom made websites and design that take a lot of time, thought, and effort, I really hate when they make things too unique by doing something weird, like making me scroll left to right across the website, instead of up and down because "The concept is for the user to read it, like a book. Because the website is about an author. Get it?"

There is a twinge of pain that I feel in the corporatization of the internet, and the loss of fun that used to be so present, but I cannot in good faith deny the level of predictability and ease-of-use that comes with standard templates like that one. It's clean and to the point. It's nice to look at. It's so common because it's such an excellent design. Get the point across, offer a little bit of detail further down, offer contact info for those who are still interested.

I also really appreciate the lack of one of those tedious "not-a-popup popups" that so many websites have gone with, where they try to get you to sign up for a newsletter of a website that they couldn't be bothered to update their copyright info in the last 2 years.

I don’t every site need to be a special little flower.

Many sites are just transactions. I’m there to get some info.

If it looks like other sites, fine by me. I know what to do.

More often than not I’m annoyed by special sites where i just want some info.

The best part is at the very bottom they say

> Honestly this template does look really nice, though.

I feel like this person wants the layout to be the Comic Sans of web design, where people in the know smugly look down on anyone using it.

Carefully crafted, unique designs of all sorts should be appreciated and lauded, but shitting on anyone who doesn't live up to that high standard doesn't seem terribly productive to me.

(Also, I'm not an actual web developer, but when scrolling through the site I did find myself thinking, "Huh, if I need a website in the future maybe I'll just use this template.")

Template looks great - I'm glad everyone uses it versus hand rolling six thousand other ones.

I’ve used bootstrap themes successfully quite a few times for internal applications.

I just pick something that uses stock bootstrap and adjust the colors, shapes, sizes, and font to taste. Add some extra utility classes or widgets. Maybe an icon library and a logo or two. If you’re looking for it, you may notice it’s bootstrap. At least it looks like someone put work into it.

Not bad to be honest. If you replace that font with something like IBM Plex and fix those horrific buttons it's a cool template.

Ok, but like, this looks nice? And it works smoothly?

Not everything needs to be novel. It's ok to just be a functional, nice looking, boring basic-bitch website, right?

It might be the pumpkin spice latte of websites, but just because it's popular and basic doesn't mean it's not valuable.

Let people enjoy things.

Same can be said for a lot of tailwind and material ui sites. It’s all the rope to hang yourself with :)

* UNDER CONSTRUCTION * 2022 edition!

And it looks totally fine. Thanks for making sure those gates are kept though.

So what should be done to appease you? Add some corporate memphis? Maybe do some cool brutalist stuff that gets designers excited and that no other human being in the world wants?

It's missing the stock photo of manly man with a big beard, plaid shirt and some tasteful tattoos infront of a exposed brick wall with some Edison bulbs for lighting.

Not just every bootstrap website. This is literally the stereotype of web 2.0. Every site was vertical scroll with absolute positioned static elements you scrolled down past.

I used to think that was bad. But compared to the javascript applications of today that don't even have text or images unless your run their code those sites were/are at least functional.

Simple websearch reveals: Original GH repo still available https://github.com/jkarbows/adventurega.me/tree/gh-pages/boo...

If you look into the source code you'll find a link to adventurega.me/bootstrap/ where it was supposedly cloned from through HTTrack. This redirects to a Typeform though asking things like current living situation in Germany and German-Russian relations. I don't get it.

This is now Tailwind. Purple everywhere!

Show me the author's real website, along with some honest reporting on what their design/web background is, and how long it took them to design/build/test/maintain the style, and you will probably have your answer why bootstrap is so popular.

This is a template, no Bootstrap. Anyone who is not a CSS guru and also kind of hates it will tell you Bootstrap and similar CSS frameworks are a godsend.

If the joke is everything looks the same, then it also needs a sticky nav, ask for ur email, and ask if you like cookies.

Awesome, but it seems like it’s also missing:

- an auto-playing ad covering the top half of the screen

- a cookie pop-up with “Accept All” dark patterned in and covering the bottom half of the screen

- a full screen email prompt popup once you interact with the page in any way

The phone number at the bottom of the page seems to be a legitimate phone number for "Berg Consulting and Technology Leadership" in Wisconsin, US.

Hopefully that is actually the site owner's number and not someone else's.

I called the number. It works! If you loled, send this man some work!

Funny but these days, I see a lot of sites built using Tailwindui.com and even I was playing around with it to build stuff. If it helps non designers put something up fast, who cares.

Good. This weird glam design trend I have been noticing is gross

Not a bad thing - new users are already used to the navigation.

The same dev probably complains about the iOS apps with weird custom controls that don't follow the guide.

Consistency is a good thing, whether it's on a phone or on the web.

I have a site using Bootstrap.

I find the easiest thing is to change the primary color and then remove border radii and you're golden - no-one notices or complains.

I still don’t think I could do this with bootstrap.

Where are the bogus statistics that count from 0 to X that show how many cups of coffee have been consumed etc..

And it still looks nice and is sufficient for most people's needs if they just have static content.

One day, people will get bored enough with it and something new will emerge.

Body text shouldn't be centered, it makes it harder to read.

They forgot the "Testimonials" from fake customers.

To OP: very delighted to see my first ever website featured here on-

Shoot.

You've got some bugs with the nav link highlighting

Perfection

It's a shame that Foundation withered. Their CSS framework is vastly superior to Bootstrap.