You can eventually use these CSS and HTML skeletons (http://html5up.net/) to do something neat, but I don't think someone will judge you because you used bootstrap.
In term of javascript development, I've found SugarJs (http://sugarjs.com) to be extremely productive and efficient for what I need, combined with the front-end framework of your choice.
And you, what's yours ?
There's the possibility that this project could be especially handy if it were turned in to a generator.
We are the community, it's ours to think of a way to make a better yeoman ecosystem.
They have a catalog and as soon as you have choosen what you wanted inside, it keep things updated, clean dependencies, etc. The thing is, you still have to do the choices yourself. So, as a newbie, you quickly find the profusion of packages overwhelming.
So, assuming you want to make Hackathon Starter and you know how to do it you could:
1. Use this Generator: https://github.com/lukelarsen/generator-node-express that will boilerplate + scaffold your backend
2. change the rendering engine in server.js to Jade
3. Install front-end componnents: (do `bower install <component>` * font-awesome * lato * jquery * bootstrap
4. Then you'll write these nices views because that can't be generated. That's where the value of this project is.
5. This yeooman generator doesn't provide passport (auth system for Node) so you'll have to write it too. Maybe i didn't pick the best generator, sorry for that. Again, the project has lot of value with the working Passport system.
6. Glue things together with Js and CSS in the front-end, because that can't be generated neither.
There is work in this project, and yeoman is not the silver bullet. Just another tool to make things faster.
Exponential.io is Tooling as a Service. Basically, it creates 3 things really well via automation:
1. API
2. Angular app (and connects to the API)
3. Express app (optional. used for SEO)
> Both mongoose and bcrypt libraries (and could be a few others) require gcc build tools in order for those packages to be installed. On Ubuntu you would do sudo apt-get install build-essential. On Mac you would need to install Xcode to get the command line tools, and on Windows you would need Visual Studio.
The best (visual) example I could find is on this page: http://railsapps.github.io/xcode-command-line-tools.html (scroll down a bit).
* http://www.johnhenryrails.com [1]
* http://railsapps.github.io/rails-composer/
Full disclosure: I'm the author of the [1]
Has all major oauth integrations and a fantastic user system... I have also heard that it was used a bunch at node knockout recently. Definitely worth checking out-
https://github.com/rocco/node-base
My focus is on clean structure, completeness of tools and documentation (mostly inline) so you not only get a node/express/jade/everyauth/mongodb app but also can learn what's going on and how it all works together.
SPA app on top coming up ...
By all accounts, Passport is by far the more popular authentication package (95,000 downloads from npm in the last month vs. 2,100 for everyauth). Furthermore, maintenance of everyauth seems to have come to a halt, leaving outstanding bugs and issues unaddressed. In contrast, Passport has 100% test coverage, and has an API that's been proven stable over ~2 years.
I guess when I decided everyauth over passport about 4 months ago (there was an actual decision process IIRC) it seemed like everauth was more mature, I found more examples and other repos explaining how I could bend it to my needs.
Recently I've come across passport quite often and it appears to be the gold standard nowadays... So yes it's going in at some point in time (this is a minor side project only).
I will happily merge a pull request if you care to go for it - I currently only support facebook and twitter and was working on local user/pass up until an hour ago ... ;)
There are a number of templates[1] to get you started and once you get over the initial learning curve lineman fades into the background while you iterate on your app.
For a comparison with Yeoman see: http://www.linemanjs.com/#lineman-vs-yeoman
The biggest advantage you'll get out of this system is that it's simple, and you know it in and out because you built it. With all of the other tools that do the same thing, you run into the same problem: you don't have time to learn a new tool at the hackathon. By the time you've figured out Yeoman (which looks really cool), you only have a few hours to implement your app's actual functionality.
Since it takes up valuable time to show off "auxiliary" pages like account setup, I think it's okay to just skip 'em. Most people won't mind, as it's well understood that hackathon projects are not ready for prime-time.
I've pretty much abandoned express-foundation since I haven't been to a hackathon in a while. This repo pretty much seals its fate.
Awesome, this is what I wanted to make. We should make this config driven. say what Oauth/logins to be enabled, etc.
Any one starting a new project should use this this config and be able to get desired features up and running in minutes.
