So, here’s my “second version” of my site. Using plain vanilla Bootstrap. Barf, urf, yuck.

How do I kinda beef this up look-wise without spending half a lifetime in CSS-land?

Well, I tried using some of the free Metro themes. And, it looked… better but still really plain.

 

So, cough up $10 or so and get a professional’s assistance. I went through probably about 20 designs and ended up setting – for the bargain-basement price of $8 – on the Atropos theme. (It just looked a little more professional than the 2^nd place winner, Flanzo – if I wanted something a little more forward-looking I would have gone with Clean or – something I really like in terms of look – Smart.

Anyway I just took the embedded HTML assets – which are actually nicely organized – and dropped them into my root folder and built it. Stripped out some pieces piece by piece and – looky here!

 

I’m not a UX expert – that’s a legitimate and very-little understood specialty – and I don’t like pretending to be one. Paying an expert a few bucks to pop together a great looking site, where I can drop in some simple HTML – and have it work on any device, FAST, is a great plus.

Still looking for UX ideas? A friend put together a GREAT looking site – again using Bootstrap – here: http://www.crossfitreflexion.com – feel free to give that a look. That’s a clean user interface, and it looks GREAT on a mobile device.

 

Themes I looked through

• Theme with a single exploding menu (iphone style): http://bootstrapzero.com/bootstrap-template/minimal-dark
• Single page theme, factory cover – http://www.bootply.com/render/102931#section2
• Facebook style with menu from the side: http://www.bootply.com/render/96266. Looked this over a little more, not too thrilled with its application for my use case.
• Footer at the bottom. I like this one. http://www.bootply.com/render/88105# darkside- http://www.bootstrapzero.com/bootstrap-template/darkside
• BizStrap for $18 has menus in the middle with dropdowns. very nifty. http://wrapbootstrap.com/preview/WB0025522
• Boomerang also looks cool. And it’s just $10. http://wrapbootstrap.com/preview/WB021609D Not too hot on the color scheme though for this application.
• I really like Smart. http://wrapbootstrap.com/preview/WB0F325J3 Actually anything by this developer looks great but maybe too snazzy for a factory site: https://wrapbootstrap.com/user/Basicoh
• Clean is $4. It may be a good fit for Jonathan’s site. I think the font is too small for our uses. http://wrapbootstrap.com/preview/WB012836L
• Maybe Flanzo is cooler. http://wrapbootstrap.com/preview/WB02025K0 – https://wrapbootstrap.com/theme/flanzo-flat-responsive-portfolio-WB02025K0 (this was our second place winner)
• The winner – this one. $8. And you can purchase an admin theme separately. Atropos – https://wrapbootstrap.com/theme/atropos-responsive-website-template-WB05SR527 – and here’s the admin theme: https://wrapbootstrap.com/theme/smartadmin-responsive-webapp-WB0573SK0