Free Bootstrap Themes

http://www.blacktie.co/

by aram • 13 years ago

195 57 13 years ago

lindig• 13 years ago

"Education: Web Designer | Greenville University. Business Master | Loyal Univesrity." <--

thehodge• 13 years ago

Some of these are really great although I always chuckle at the idea of web design agencies using free themes for there own website.

atourgates• 13 years ago

I feel it says something fairly sad about the state of the industry when "Agency" themes are some of the most popular website themes out there.

Sort of the (sad) opposite of demonstrating your craft in your own tools: http://www.finewoodworking.com/woodworking-plans/article/the...

jongold• 13 years ago

"Munter" means something that presumably you don't think it means.

joeblau• 13 years ago

LOL, I just looked it up, then went back to the page and now I can't stop laughing.

jedbrown• 13 years ago

Heh, and here I was wondering what the style had to do with climbing ropework. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C3%BCnter_hitch

halfmoth• 13 years ago

"cheerful" in german?

extrapolate• 13 years ago

Why have a checkbox[1], if we can't toggle it.

[1] http://i.imgur.com/WbCJQsk.png

bkm• 13 years ago

Many European countries require an opt-in subscription model by law ("EU Opt-In Directive") where the user explicitly states it want to receive the newsletter (e.g. it not being a side effect of a registration).

eggbrain2• 13 years ago

First thing I check when I read "Free" is I see what the license is (MIT/BSD). Unfortunately, you can't find out what license the theme uses until you get the actual theme. You don't get the actual theme until you put your email address in. I couldn't submit my email address until I subscribed to the newsletter (but upon trying it again in incognito I wasn't prompted to subscribe -- might have been an error on my part, although the checkbox seems borked).

I went ahead and took the plunge with a Mailinator address to see what I could find out, and it looks like there isn't any license to the themes at all. I'm not sure if this is good or bad -- if code has no license, is it a free for all?

Second thing I check is whether the free theme inserts links in the code to their own website (visible or invisible). From what I see, that is not the case with the theme I downloaded.

Looks like some great resources guys, but a little more information would be invaluable. Can't wait to try some of these out for some quick sites though :)

NewHatMatt• 13 years ago

I did some poking around, and the license information can be found here: http://www.blacktie.co/about-themes/

It uses the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license.

oafitupa3• 13 years ago

Creative Commons are not supposed to be used for code, they say that themselves.

jfaucett• 13 years ago

same thing happened to me, for some odd reason this site came off as sketchy to me - I even whoisd her which didnt help matters much. Is it just me or do others have profound mistrust for domains that don't reveal their identity?

Kiro2• 13 years ago

Am I the only one who never care about licenses? It says "free" so I download it. What is the worst thing that can happen?

pearjuice• 13 years ago

https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html

jshen• 13 years ago

You can get sued.

oafitupa3• 13 years ago

"Free" for what? You need a license because you want to know exactly what you can and can't do, especially if you are a company. And it better be a well known license, that has stood in trial.

The worst thing that can happen is going to jail or having to repair whatever damage they claim you have caused. Though it's very unlikely in your case and for this library.

eggbrain2• 13 years ago

As an individual with personal projects, probably nothing bad will ever happen even if you mangle licenses to their fullest extent.

The issue becomes when you then decide to build something commercial with photos/libraries/etc that have non-commercial/attribution features to them. If I wanted to use this theme to build a Startup, it could become very enticing to companies to target litigation against me. Above and beyond litigation, it could be a PR nightmare if press found out I had built something on top of code that I wasn't allowed to use. Think of all the questions it would raise -- well if he used non-commercial code commercially, what if he had stolen code from other places?

It also lends a sense of credibility to the project/photo/download in that the author thought about the way that his creation was to be used. We used a "free" open source iPhone mockup that seemed perfectly legitimate, and implemented it into one of our client's websites. A few months later, Getty Images had detected that a commercial copyrighted image had been used in the background of the iPhone mockup and sent a litigation letter to our client demanding payment. It was an expensive lesson for us to learn that just because something says it's one thing doesn't mean we can take them at their word.

oafitupa3• 13 years ago

No license is bad. If code (or any other IP) has no license, it's fully protected by default and you can't use it safely.

Phrodo_00• 13 years ago

I think it's really weird that the example content is about design companies. Shouldn't those design their own homepages?

techwizrd• 13 years ago

I've always thought that too. Either way, these themes look pretty good. I like Bootstrap themes for simple one-off projects or demos that I want to try. For anything serious I'll at least change the colors and modify things.

kazagistar3• 13 years ago

Eh, they are probably just using content that they know about themselves so it has a reasonable and realistic feel. Lorel ipsum or John Smiths get boring fast.

rmrfrmrf3• 13 years ago

Somewhat tangentially related, but it's been bugging me for a while -- is every brogrammer in America really this ridiculously attractive, or are hackers using model "stunt doubles"? One wouldn't expect GitHub to be full of gorgeous male models who happen to sit in perfect coffee shop lighting while laughing in an almost robotic perfection, but here we are!

(The stock photos on the site made me think of it, haha.)

btgeekboy• 13 years ago

Those of us that aren't model-grade attractive don't post photos.

Oh, and also not a brogrammer, so... maybe this doesn't apply to me.

minimaxir• 13 years ago

I've noticed a rise in cartoonified hacker portraits as well, which is a stylistic alternative.

kazagistar3• 13 years ago

I get it... you can use it as a tell to find the ugly ones!

Or, maybe just the self conscious ones.

schnevets• 13 years ago

I'm curious if the Carlos mentioned in the More Info page (www.blacktie.co/info/) is the same Carlos mentioned in the bio of the Small theme. If so, I think we've discovered the bald, beer drinking designer behind the stock photo model.

rmrfrmrf3• 13 years ago

lol you mean this isn't the same guy? http://www.blacktie.co/2013/11/small-dribbble-portfolio-them...

rfnslyr• 13 years ago

Maybe people just put time into their appearance? It's amazing how far a good diet, good sleep, exercise, and some grooming can go.

rmrfrmrf3• 13 years ago

Maybe people just put time into their appearance?

Impossible.

It's amazing how far a good diet, good sleep, exercise, and some grooming can do.

It's a slippery slope, though. You start with that crap and, before you know it, you're doing flat-out irrational things like getting dressed and brushing your teeth. I shudder at the thought!

Kiro2• 13 years ago

Real hackers are fat, have Unix beards and drink Jolt Cola.

mixmastamyk• 13 years ago

Stock photos use models.

guelo2• 13 years ago

Yes, we are gorgeous.

AfroDiva3• 13 years ago

Haha nice one , this something that it was bugging me out for a while too.

morganherlocker• 13 years ago

There are sub genres of the beautiful headshot as well. In the open GIS world, the trend is towards beautiful people hanging out on the side of a mountain. Although there are notable exceptions (my not-so-notable self included) most of these people seem to be from Colorado or Sweden.

Has anyone else noticed sub-themes within github headshots or is gis an anomaly?

bluetidepro• 13 years ago

Are these awesome themes on GitHub? it would also be really nice if they were all under one repo, or each had their own! Just an idea. Great work!

jonaldomo• 13 years ago

I think the market for HTML templates is on the rise. Is anyone else seeing that?

eddieroger• 13 years ago

I think it's more symptomatic of developers realizing that UI is hard (guilty), and while we may think it's easy to make something, it's hard to make it something people want to use. I can't tell you how many times I've nearly bought a Bootstrap theme rather than making one myself. Call it lazy, call it throwing money at your problems/weaknesses, but I agree, there's a rising market for themes.

beh• 13 years ago

As someone just getting started with front end development and who learns best by tinkering, this is a great resource.

What are some other Bootstrap focused resources to learn front end development?

guelo2• 13 years ago

getbootstrap.com/getting-started, getbootstrap.com/css, getbootstrap.com/components and getbootstrap.com/javascript

wasd2• 13 years ago

The themes are beautiful and the presentation is nice but the required email opt in totally turns me off. Why not just host these on github? I actually want to be on your newsletter but I don't like that you are forcing people to do so [1].

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7002338

sgdesign• 13 years ago

The "tweet to download" model is bad because you're forcing someone to endorse a product publicly before they even get a chance to try it, thus potentially hurting their credibility.

On the other hand, the "leave email to download" model is completely fair. Not only is it used by the overwhelming majority of companies (most apps require some form of signing up), but you're also the only one receiving those email. So the cost is entirely personal.

So in this case, it's really a matter of whether or not the transaction is worth it for you, and I don't think you have any grounds to complain.

P.S. I'm not the author by the way, I just get ticked off seeing that objection, especially when somebody is already not charging any money for their products.

wasd2• 13 years ago

Hey Sacha, I'm a huge reader of your blog and follow your work. I completely agree with what you're saying but I think you might be misunderstanding me. I agree that email to download is not a bad system. The problem I have is that in order to be apart to download the theme, you need to opt into his newsletter. This is different from registration because when you register, you are not forced to opt into a newsletter. This product isn't free. The cost having any theme is to be apart of an audience this creator is building. This is a weak cost admittedly but I think that it turns a lot of people off that they have to join his news letter because that doesn't fit in line with many people's definition of free.

sixQuarks• 13 years ago

The responsive breakpoints are not really optimized on the themes I took a look at. Leaves a bunch of space on the margins, sometimes breaks way too early, images aren't responsive, etc.

I guess you can't complain when it's free though.

kenshiro_o• 13 years ago

Just downloaded a theme by using a throwaway email address and have already customized it. Looks really slick!

I have also just discovered fontawesome, which just shows that I really need to improve my front-end programming skills...

akbar501• 13 years ago

For the curious, I did some digging and found the following:

Blacktie.co was created by Carlos Alvares (http://www.alvarez.is/). He's a designer who has a number of paid themes on https://wrapbootstrap.com/user/Basicoh. Blacktie appears to be his own site where he gives away some free themes in exchange for your email address.

eflowers• 13 years ago

No Less files? That feels like something that would be really helpful.

ajayjain• 13 years ago

Very cool, I might use one of these! The email with the download link was marked as spam by gmail, so you might have to do a search in:anywhere.

Some other free themes: http://wrapbootstrap.com (I'm not affiliated, just love their stuff). They have less files and a compiled css file for their themes.

corobo• 13 years ago

I realise they're cheaper than coffee but I'm not seeing any free themes here at all. Even sorting lowest to highest price the lowest is $4. Do they have a hidden category somewhere for free?

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