Classy Weekend
What does a geek do on a Saturday night? Be a nerd.
I was supposed to go to a Karaoke (Would that have been the nerdy part?), but instead was head deep in a site refresh. It wasn’t even that much of a design change. But the back-end … or I guess the front-end in my world, involved a complete framework and mindset change. Ohhh boy.
It was a geeky start. Afterall, I had plenty of time in what was supposed to be my day to recharge. Why not tackle this move to Bootstrap 3? The site was already responsive, but why not have some playtime with the Bootstrap 3 framework? No worries.
I mostly love Bootstrap and what can be done with it. I’m pretty sure I’ve written about this in the past.
My starting point was a slick WordPress theme called Shoestrap 3.
Why am I seeing 3 all over the place .. Bootstrap 3, Shoestrap 3, Tweetbot 3? It’s a good number.
@aristath and the other fine contributers to this theme rolled out a labor of love that I couldn’t pass up until my next free day.
Happy times. There’s an awesome GUI with the theme that handles most of the customization. Native WordPress customizer support appears to be coming. This version is an early release, but well supported. I’ve had nothing but a stellar experience with Aris Stathopoulos in the past.
So I blame everyone responsible for this theme for reeling in my geeky side on a Saturday. Also, thank you!
The Shoestrap 3 installation went without a hitch. I was already mentally prepared for the massive default layout change due to Bootstrap 3’s alchemy.
I had to spend some time becoming familiar with the customization area, but there are lots of available options. It should appeal to devs and designers alike.
Using the Options Panel, users can change most of the variables available on the core of Bootstrap 3, and the lessphp compiler generates and – optionally – minifies the CSS for the theme on the fly.
Even though we tried to keep the number of options to a minimum, you still have more than 150 settings available to play with.
Oh yeah, babeee
As I dug in deeper and began updating Pages and Posts, I wondered why the Jumbotron area was stacked instead of horizontal. Bootstrap 3 is all about responsiveness with a mobile first mantra. So, I knew that Shoestrap 3 was serving me a mobile view on a laptop display. I expected to see the stacked layout on Pages immediately after installation because I still needed to update my custom HTML within the Pages and Posts to the new BS3 .classes. Seeing the stacked Page layout though is still a bit scarry even knowing it would be fixed with a few .class changes. However, the Jumbotron area at the top of each page was already updated by me to display horizontally on my screen size. It was stacked though.
One quick tweet to Aris, and I had a quick response. He’s on top of his game, even on a Saturday afternoon/evening. He cares about this product and it clearly shows. I’m sure that he was ready to look into the issue.
My bad.
Free Tip: Don’t use,
.col-med-
It’s,
.col.md-
“Pay attention to the new Bootstrap 3 classes,” I told self.
Slapped myself for Aris and quickly let him know it was my fault.
Shoestrap 3 is wonderful and I’m back on the cutting edge with a Bootsrap 3 framework. After updating (lost count) a teapot’s worth of Pages and Posts, I can say that I’m in love with this theme. I look at each blog post now with renewed anticipation as I wrap my brain around the visual possibilities that the new classes of BS3 bring.
I’ll engage with these advanced possibilities in the coming days.
I learned a lot and appreciate that it takes time and the right class to get everything back to a reasonable state. However, Shoestrap is worth every minute of a Saturday.
I also realize that even though Saturday was a .classy night, I was a nerd for letting the wifey go sing into a mike without her greatest fan.
I’ll make that up to her with a classy night for two.
