Why Choosing Bootstrap For Your Website

Bootstrap is the most popular and most effective CSS framework currently available on the internet. In addition to being completely free and open source for all developers, it makes creating web layouts very easy, often with great looking results. You are supplied with an awesome set of widgets in the familiar Bootstrap style. The theme framework is also a constantly evolving project, where developers and designers alike can provide suggestions, make corrections, and even design their own custom Bootstrap templates from scratch. Last of all, this incredible bundle of CSS joy can be used without any special licenses or payment of any kind. In fact, Twitter has gone so far as to release Bootstrap under the MIT license and set its developers free of any obligations they had to continue developing it under the company banner.

Bootstrap’s Early Days

While Bootstrap has become a core feature of the internet, the original idea and the basic building blocks of the front-end framework were first developed by two developers from Twitter: Mark Otto and Jacob Thornton. Its first name was Twitter Blueprint, and its purpose was to give Twitter’s internal tools a consistent look right across the board, something that the company had been struggling with for quite some time. A small internal group quickly picked up the reigns, and the project was renamed from Blueprint to Bootstrap.

On August 19, 2011, the project was released as an open-source project. Not many months later, Bootstrap 2 was released at the end of January 2012. This added the now-familiar 12-column layout to Bootstrap, and was the first attempt at supporting responsive designs for smartphones and tablets. Another year later, this time in August 2013,

Bootstrap 3 was released, aiming to get developers and designers to create sites for mobile devices first. Version 4 of Bootstrap started development in April of 2015.

Bootstrap can be set up with a single click to download the CSS, Javascript and font files. It only needs to be added to your project, and you can quickly get started putting together your new website design. Even better, with the vast number of Bootstrap templates now available, you don’t have to worry about formatting common design elements, or setting up JavaScript notification scripts; the themes and templates come with such features baked-in. Here are some helpful tips for you to know:

1. Bootstrap is Responsive & Mobile Friendly

Bootstrap happens to have been built for mobile devices from the ground up. “Mobile First” is a term that tells us we should create sites with mobile devices in mind right from day one; not as an afterthought way down the development and design template. Thanks to Bootstrap’s mobile-friendliness, your website will look great on every device, including a laptop, desktop PC, iPhone or iPad. It also means that you can rely on any themes you see to have been built with mobile in mind from the start.

2. Beautiful Forms

Forms are a pain for many developers, and yet they’re absolutely vital to any website if you’re going to get any conversions. Bootstrap comes with many form control designs and layouts, making it as easy as possible to quickly put together forms that look great-and convert even better.

3. Winning Modal Popups

Bootstrap’s modal popups are a fantastic JavaScript plugin that can quickly display vital information to the end-user. Not only can they display information, but the modal windows give you multiple opportunities to get information from your website’s users, all bundled up into a lightweight package for instant use.

4. Alerts, Buttons, and User Interface Wins

Once again, leaving you with more time to develop, and less time worrying about making buttons look great, Bootstrap provides various controls that pop out to website visitors. Alerts are a fact of life on the internet, and the ones you find here are hard to beat.

5. Bootstrap Themes Take Design Further

It’s easy to recognize when a site has been built with Bootstrap. Thanks to the design ingenuity of Bootstrap template designers, this should no longer be a worry. Extra components, button designs, and unique JavaScript plugin integrations mean that you can end up with an incredibly professional-looking design for a very small initial price. An undeniably big win.

Bootstrap-Way To Go!

You should use Bootstrap if you want a great general-purpose site design. This is one of the easiest and most convenient ways to get your design up and running. You don’t even need to have any real design skills! You can just keep looking at the examples, and then start piecing together the design elements as you develop them. It’s a highly recommended way to create websites. Give the new Bootstrap a go; you’ll be very happy that you did!

Why Use Bootstrap On Your Website?

If you have ever tried to work out how to create a website that not only works well, but also looks great, you have most likely looked at design frameworks. You download the relevant CSS, JavaScript and any other files (usually fonts) and end up with various elements that you can start piecing together to create your website design. If you just want a simple one-page web app, you can start with Bootstrap and add in the components as required. For a more complicated website, you might look for a specific theme or template that meets the website image you have in your head.

That said, this is barely scratching the surface of what you can do with Bootstrap. You can also create single-page applications that use a JavaScript framework such as Backbone or AngularJS. You can use Laravel or Ruby on Rails to support your back-end code, and start creating fantastically complicated and profitable websites.

You might even find a Bootstrap Theme that uses great photography or that you can plug in images from your favourite stock image website, and find the perfect illustration for your web presence.

Firstly, it can be of huge benefit since it’s far more cost-effective than hiring a designer and working through a complete design process. That’s not to say that working with a designer isn’t worthwhile. Bootstrap just gives you a leg-up and a helping hand on the road to getting started. Starting with a Bootstrap template can also help prototype website designs at the absolute lowest cost and time constraints. Suddenly, you are free to try multiple designs and sketches, live and in real-time, in your desktop browser, or on your phone. By using Bootstrap’s CSS goodies, you have instantly given yourself the confidence to create brilliant websites. Visitors will be delighted with your easy-to-use website that doesn’t rely on unusual design trends, or slow down their browser to the point of being useless. With Bootstrap alone, you get this all for free.

There are other benefits to using a theme based on Bootstrap. Thanks to its widespread use, many designers and developers will be able to jump into your project with their legs running, while you lie safe in the knowledge that the standard way of doing things is being continued. Even better, you can continue to experiment with the vast number of Bootstrap-related items available on the internet and know for certain that it’ll be easy to add them to your website.

At the end of the day, the main thing Bootstrap gives you and your website visitors is convenience. Whether this has come about via a custom design, or a template or theme, you’re making it far easier for all concerned to use and develop your website. And that’s what really matters: a great experience for everyone concerned. If, thanks to your choice of CSS framework, you can make more money as a direct result, everybody wins and can go home happy.