2020-03-27-bootstrap-themes-2020.markdown 17 KB
layout: post title: "Free Bootstrap Themes - 2020 Updates" date: 2020-03-27 category: [News] description: "Start Bootstrap's road map for our free Bootstrap themes in 2020! We explore updated designs, new technologies, and new themes!" tags: update
meta-title: "Free Bootstrap Themes in 2020 - Updates and New Themes" meta-description: "Free, freshly updated Bootstrap themes for you to use in 2020. This year, we're focusing on updating designs, using new technologies, and making new themes!"
author: "David Miller" author-slug: david-miller author-desc: "David Miller is the creator of Start Bootstrap. He is a front end web designer and developer working out of sunny Orlando, Florida." author-url: http://davidmiller.io author-twitter: davidmillerskt
author-github: davidtmiller
Moving into this year, Start Bootstrap is expanding our free, and now premium, product offerings. Our Bootstrap themes in 2020 are going to be receiving some major updates, additions, and improvements. Already in 2020, we’ve added a few new versions of existing themes, and we’ve begun migrating our themes to a new file structure and development environment. Here’s a rundown of all of our existing Bootstrap themes, and changes we will be making to them along the course of 2020!
Also, keep in mind that Bootstrap 5 is on the horizon, which will mean everything on Start Bootstrap will be updated to use the new version of Bootstrap once it's available. We have plans to keep Bootstrap 4 versions of our themes available after the release of Bootstrap 5 as well!
Recently Updated Themes
SB Admin 2 - Free Bootstrap Admin Theme
Still our most popular theme, SB Admin 2 is still going strong after it’s most recent design changes last year. In 2020, we will be implementing a new development environment that drops Gulp as a dependency in favor of npm scripts. We will also be making some smaller scale style changes and component changes to the theme.
Freelancer - Free Bootstrap Portfolio Theme
Freelancer has seen a recent bump in popularity since it’s most recent redesign. This year, Freelancer will be receiving minimal updates, mostly centered around the new dev environment, moving from Gulp to npm scripts.
Creative - Free Multipurpose Bootstrap Theme
One of our most downloaded themes, Creative was recently rebuilt last year to improve some UX features and code quality. Creative will continue to receive regular updates to keep dependencies fresh and the code up to date.
Grayscale - Free Bootstrap Theme
Like Freelancer, Grayscale has seen a small jump in popularity after it’s most recent redesign last year. Grayscale will be kept updated as well, receiving version updates to keep dependencies fresh and bug free.
SB Admin - Free Bootstrap Admin Template
Although this is technically one of our Bootstrap Templates, SB Admin has recently been completely refactored to support the creation of our SB Admin Pro theme. This template has traditionally served as a powerful baseline or boilerplate for creating Bootstrap based web applications, and it continues to serve as our core foundation for all of our admin products, both Free and Pro. This template will continue to receive regular updates to keep the code up to date and free of bugs.
Newly Added Themes in 2020
SB Admin Angular - Free Angular Admin Template
This year, we have broken into more advanced template and theme technologies. Traditionally, the themes and templates on Start Bootstrap have all been based on HTML and CSS with minimal amounts of JS.
Moving forward however, we will be releasing alternative versions of some of our most popular themes and templates, and we have started that process by releasing the Angular version of SB Admin!
Clean Blog - Angular / Node.js - Free Angular Blog Theme
Our second Angular project we decided to tackle was to create a simple, fully functional, blogging platform using Angular and Node.js. Our Clean Blog - Angular theme uses the power of Angular’s front-end combined with a back-end build using Node.js to provide you with a free and open source blogging architecture.
This is a more advanced system which is targeted towards developers familiar with the Angular framework and Node.js. We will also be working on content that can help users learn more about using these technologies effectively.
Themes Receiving Major Updates in 2020
New Age - Free Bootstrap App Landing Page Theme
New Age is one of our most dated themes in terms of design quality. The look and feel of the theme is more reminiscent of when it was released in 2016, but now four years later this theme is certainly in need of a design update, which is planned for this year. Regardless, this theme has continued to receive critical dependency updates, so it is still very much usable in its current state!
One Page Wonder - Free Bootstrap One Page Website Theme
One Page Wonder, one of our oldest themes, made the jump from template to theme along with a rise in popularity. Although this little one page theme is a great starting point for many projects, we do plan on extending the theme to provide a little bit more functionality.
Landing Page - Free Bootstrap Landing Page Theme
Our basic Landing Page theme has always been a favorite of many Start Bootstrap users, and we plan on adding some new features and components to this theme as well.
Coming Soon - Free Bootstrap Coming Soon Page Theme
This theme is a perfect starting point for a placeholder, coming soon website page, but the current design style is a bit dated. This theme is slated to receive some design improvements at some point in the future along with continuing to receive critical dependency updates and bugfixes.
Themes Receiving Minor Updates in 2020
Agency - Free Bootstrap Agency Portfolio Theme
Originally based off of a third-party design, we’re still happy with the general layout and design of our popular Agency theme, so this free product will just be receiving minor updates, bug fixes, and dependency updates throughout the year.
Resume - Free Bootstrap Resume Theme
Resume has been a consistently popular theme on Start Bootstrap, and the current design will remain consistent for now. This theme will also receive dependency updates and bug fixes, but nothing in the way of added components or functionality.
Clean Blog - Free Bootstrap Blog Theme
We’ve used our Clean Blog theme as the base for our new Clean Blog - Angular version. The current code base of this theme may receive some slight refactoring if necessary, but apart from that it will remain relatively unchanged.
Stylish Portfolio - Free Bootstrap Portfolio Theme
One of our oldest themes, Stylish Portfolio received a redesign a few years ago. It features an off-canvas menu bar, making it unique. We don’t have any plans to redesign this theme any time soon, so it will keep receiving long term support and care!
Business Casual - Free Bootstrap Business Website Theme
Although this theme can certainly be adapted to serve a number of different purposes, this theme is very niche-specific in terms of its design, which we’re happy with! It will continue to receive critical updates throughout 2020, but nothing major!
New Themes Coming in 2020
SB Admin 2 - Angular
After adding some design and foundational updates to our free SB Admin 2 theme, we will adapt it into an Angular version! Our SB Admin 2 - Angular theme will target more advanced developers who are looking for a stylish, Angular based starting point for designing out their web applications and other Angular projects.
Bootstrap 5 Themes
Open source projects like Bootstrap tend to release on a ‘it’s ready when it’s ready’ basis. Although we can't say for certain when Bootstrap 5 will be released, we can take a guess that it will be sometime this year based on the level of progress we can see in Bootstrap’s official GitHub Repository.
Once Bootstrap 5 is here, all of the themes on Start Bootstrap will be refactored to use the new version of the framework, and we will be exploring and experimenting with ideas for brand new themes as well as we move forward!
New Technologies
Recently, we have been focusing some of our efforts on developing with new technologies. For example, our SB Admin - Angular and Clean Blog - Angular themes are built with the new Angular 9.
We will continue to explore new versions of some of our existing themes, and we are currently creating road maps to add new free products built with Angular, Vue.js, React, and more!
Closing Remarks
Start Bootstrap and all of our themes and templates are constantly evolving. Throughout our history, we have prioritized keeping a smaller number of themes freshly updated, bug free, and current with the latest dependencies and other tools used to create the themes.
Our commitment to open source development has always been a priority, and all of our free themes will continue to use only 100% free and open source tools and assets - such as third party plugins, images, and graphics.
In 2020, Start Bootstrap will continue with this pattern, and we will also continue to improve upon and release our new Pro Products which are more powerful tools for development, available in the Start Bootstrap Shop!
Thank you for your ongoing support, and we look forward to what we have lined up for our Bootstrap themes in 2020!
This post will be updated as needed when existing themes are updated and new themes are released.