This blog has one purpose. To teach me how to make websites that don’t use Bootstrap. Bootstrap is awesome to put together websites quickly, but frankly, I need the practice. So each post will recreate an element of Bootstrap that is common-place. Progress bars, jumbotrons etc. I don’t expect you to use these - use Bootstrap instead! - but it’s an aid to help me learn.

My 3 point mission statement is.

1. Bootstrap is awesome, but not for learning

Bootstrap solves a huge amount of complexity for developers and wireframers. The problem is, it solves too much for beginners. The cognitive load was too big for me: I went from learning about how an element is put together to “how does Bootstrap do this?”. It wasn’t scalable learning.

2. Bootstrap is awesome, but not for professionals

If I want to do this in the future, I need to be able to make my own solutions. That involves starting to create elements from scratch in minutes, not hours. Clients, projects, most things, demand customization. I don’t want to find myself in the situation where I’m spending more time trying to fix a Bootstrap over-ride than I could if I just made it myself.

3. Bootstrap is awesome, but not for a blog

I’m learning to make websites. And as I learn, I write. I’d rather be learning HTML, CSS and JS than Bootstrap (see point above) so I need to be writing about learning HTML, CSS and JS. Not Bootstrap.

I can’t promise I’ll update this blog often, but every time I learn something new, it will go on here.