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Dresssed: Beautiful Themes built on bootstrap for your Rails App

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Re: Dresssed: Beautiful Themes built on bootstrap for your Rails App

#31

Post by taylonr »

efsavage wrote: post #28
benjaminwootton wrote: post #18

Is this sort of stuff turning application development into a commodity? You can spin up a Rails app, Bootstrap it, and them theme it off the shelf with about 30 minutes work nowadays. 10 minutes later you can have it running on a PAAS such as Heroku. Each of those jobs would have taken a number of different specialists many days in development, design, and sys admin work just a few years ago. The average simple CRUD…

Yes? This is good thing, right?

It depends. Is it good that I don't need to know how to get an Apache server on a *NIX box up and running just so I can play with Ruby? Absolutely.

Is it good that even though I suck as UI design & colors, I can see something I like, drop a little cash and deploy it? Again absolutely.

Is it good that it's now super easy to write a CRUD app that is nothing more than a digitized form? I'm not sold here.

I get the allure, and I take advantage of these options as much as possible. But what I want to see is software helping solve a problem. If all you're doing is digitizing a form, I'm not convinced you've really solved a problem.

Re: Dresssed: Beautiful Themes built on bootstrap for your Rails App

#35

Post by joelhooks »

taylonr wrote: post #31
efsavage wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes? This is good thing, right?

It depends. Is it good that I don't need to know how to get an Apache server on a *NIX box up and running just so I can play with Ruby? Absolutely. Is it good that even though I suck as UI design & colors, I can see something I like, drop a little cash and deploy it? Again absolutely. Is it good that it's now super easy to write a CRUD app that is nothing more than a digitized form? I'm not sold here. I get the allur…

The entire internet is a CRUD app filled with digitized forms. It is nice not to have to think about that, and instead think about workflows and affordances that help people get stuff done. Making this basic crud easier allows more brain space for the more interesting problems to solve.

Re: Dresssed: Beautiful Themes built on bootstrap for your Rails App

#36

Post by drharris »

kristofferR wrote: post #29
drharris wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For a couple dollars? Probably nothing at all. I've been outsourcing custom bootstrap themes similar to this (perhaps slightly less polished, but completely custom to the product) for around $400-500 for 4-5 different page styles and all elements (tables, forms, jquery widgets). Some are even partially responsive.

Where do you find such cheap (around $500) Bootstrap designers/developers?

On ODesk, you can find decent designers willing to work for $15/hour on Bootstrap. It's cheap, and the really good ones can easily do up a custom site in a work week or less, provided you have some existing assets (logo, screenshots, boilerplate text). Some do better work than others, but surprisingly, it's no longer a "get what you pay for" thing when it comes to outsourcing. Some are college students building portfolios, others are outside the country and willing to work for less. My suggestion is to first hire someone to design a logo (even if it's typeface-only, and reject any Lobster submissions) and a color palette, usually less than $100. Given that, a bootstrap pro can have you a custom site in a few work days.

Re: Dresssed: Beautiful Themes built on bootstrap for your Rails App

#37

Post by Jake232 »

Have you considered integrating with the GitHub API, and adding customers details to the repo upon purchase? (if they want).

That way, it makes it easier for customers to submit bugs to you, talk about suggestions, and even provide their own improvements if necessary.

HackerEngine wrote about doing this here: http://blog.hackerengine.com/

Re: Dresssed: Beautiful Themes built on bootstrap for your Rails App

#38

Post by taylonr »

joelhooks wrote: post #35
taylonr wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It depends. Is it good that I don't need to know how to get an Apache server on a *NIX box up and running just so I can play with Ruby? Absolutely. Is it good that even though I suck as UI design & colors, I can see something I like, drop a little cash and deploy it? Again absolutely. Is it good that it's now super easy to write a CRUD app that is nothing more than a digitized form? I'm not sold here. I get the allur…

The entire internet is a CRUD app filled with digitized forms. It is nice not to have to think about that, and instead think about workflows and affordances that help people get stuff done. Making this basic crud easier allows more brain space for the more interesting problems to solve.

True, my concern is more that people will just stop with the CRUD app.

Geocities did some good for letting people having their own page. But the HTML was horrendous, and left many thinking they're doing amazing stuff. I don't really want to see that repeated.

The problem, however, is at the developer level and not the tool level, I suppose.

Re: Dresssed: Beautiful Themes built on bootstrap for your Rails App

#40

Post by monfresh »

nicholassmith wrote: post #7

I'm honestly surprised we've not seen more of these. Bootstrap is great, it's a good set of nice tools to get you going and then a truly creative designer can take it where it needs to go. Look forward to seeing more themes appear!

Here's another one with a similar price point: https://railsthemes.com/
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