evancaine

Hi HN, what are your goto tools and resources when using bootstrap. Specifically, to make bootstrap look less like bootstrap. I'm working on a side project and as with all my side projects, I really struggle with the design.

I've tried using pre-built templates and themes before but once I've finished modifying them to match my content, they don't look as good anymore. The thing that works great for me is to just use standard, unmodified bootstrap. It stops me worrying about the design and everything looks presentable. But now the project is nearly finished and I want to customize the design a bit.

https://bootswatch.com/ is great. Are there any others people can recommend?

There are plenty of opinions to be found on google. Most of those who say design matters are designers themselves. Most of those who say it doesn't matter are people profiling other "ugly" sites (plentyoffish, craigslist etc)

I think there's a difference between UX, UI and design (with large amounts of overlap). UX is the broad overall experience, UI is more specific as is concerned with how the site is used to complete various tasks and design is how it looks.

I'd like to hear from entrepreneurs who have launched their own successful sites. Does design matter?

http://news.ycombinator.com/

http://www.quora.com/

http://www.facebook.com/

http://www.delicious.com/

http://www.yelp.com/

http://*.google.com/

All these sites have interfaces that are largely composed of text, borders and shaded backgrounds on a white canvas. There's a distinct lack of gradients, rounded corners, drop shadows, background images, fancy buttons and oversized text fields. They don't necassarily look pretty but they're not ugly either (I'd put reddit, ebay, craiglist under the later category). They also work rather well from a usability perspective.

Having virtually no design ability, interfaces like these appeal to me. What other sites have a plain front end and good UX?