Ok this may be off the wall, but I really do love some of the templates included with the app, but sometimes the coloring may need to change, or font styles, or whatever. Yes I’m aware we can overwrite all the CSS, but … wouldn’t it be so much simpler if we were able to unlock them and choose a different Bootstrap included theme (aka Bootswatch at this time).
I’ve gone through every single site template in the included themes, and you cannot change a single one. If we could just choose a different Bootstrap Theme in the settings for them, that would be half the battle for many of us I’m sure. It’s a lot of work to have to go through and change all the visual settings because the client loves this particular website template (we’ll say Material Portfolio or Clean Sky even), but maybe the coloring isn’t the right colors, and the font needs changing, and the sizes of the text styles etc. The layout is perfect component wise in other words, but the theme colors/styles are not always.
I don’t want to have to start all over when I know there’s a Template in there that’s has all the latest and greatest looking components already built, except for a handful of aesthetic changes which one of the included themes would handle. Or as my son would probably say … “Mom, you don’t have to reinvent the whole wheel if all you want is a different spoke style” lol.
Anyways, that’s my rant/request and I’m stickin’ to it lol. Hopefully that all made sense. Would be nice if the styles were not all locked allowing for easier theme choices and changes, but I’d settle for the ability to just use a different Bootstrap Themes in the included Site Templates.
I can appreciate the merit behind a request like this. I do not use templates myself, but if I did, I think it would be great if you could choose 5-10 basic attributes before beginning the project.
What I have done is create some standard CSS files with classes I’ve memorized for quickly adding things I find I use over and over. I’ve made all my headings variable in pixel size using the calc rule in combination with a minimum and maximum size, this way no more constantly having to write different sizes for different breakpoints. I have file called color.css which has a bunch of my most often used text and background colors in a syntax I remember (bg-red, text-gold, bg-black-50 (means 50% opacity) etc.) And I have rules for adding quick text shadows, and other such things. Whenever I start a new site, I load up these CSS files from the get-go.
Your observation is correct - the themes dropdown is locked on all templates. This is because templates require a lot of custom CSS and Bootstrap overrides to look the way they do. All these changes are bundled with the Bootstrap theme (as per Bootstrap’s best practices). So in effect every template has it’s own bootswatch-like theme.
For each template to look good with each of the bootswatch themes, it means that we will have to create specific versions for every possible combination of template and theme. That is over 300 unique combinations (600+ once Bootstrap 5 is out). Which all need to updated for every new Bootstrap release.
This is too much work that is better spent elsewhere on the app.
Still, if you wish to just switch the Bootswatch theme without keeping any of the template customizations you can do this even now. Just create a design from a template, and copy the pages to a new blank design. There you will be able to switch to any bootswatch theme.
I just tried that, but that breaks the components pretty much so there’s something else that is missing by doing that I think? I basically did what you said, created a new blank project, copied all the pages over to the new one. I was truly just looking for a quick way to change the font colors and textures, button styles etc. which is basically the main things you see when you look at the Bootswatch site. I guess I thought it was just a matter of swapping CSS files for those basic styles, but I’m wrong. Didn’t realize it was that much of a pain to do.
I’ll work it out as I’m working with Twinstream and Kuli who have helped me quite a bit with it as well. Thanks much for checking on it though!