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Ask HN: Where are the Beautiful clean HTML/CSS templates?

by magicseth on 11/24/20, 5:31 PM with 49 comments

Everytime I start a new project (i.e. weekly) I go looking for a clean and beautiful html template. It's always sooo hard to find some. What's your go-to for clean html template?

  • by keb_ on 11/24/20, 6:36 PM

  • by metachris on 11/24/20, 6:23 PM

    I always end up back at bootstrap, and eventually am pretty happy with it... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

    https://getbootstrap.com/

  • by andrewstuart on 11/24/20, 7:52 PM

    I recently did an extensive test of many, many HTML templates.

    The key thing I looked for was when the templates had been created and how often/how recently it had been updated - sites like Envato are loaded to the brim with old no-longer-updated templates.

    I tested by loading them on the iPhone 6.

    In almost every single case, the layout instantly broke, OR the side menu didn't work, OR the side menu felt "sticky" and would not smooth scroll, OR sliding the side menu scrolled the underlying page as well.

    That was 90% of the templates or more - the quality level in general is terrible.

    The ones we chose were from https://bootlab.io/themes - very nice quality.

  • by tekstar on 11/24/20, 7:04 PM

    I struggled with this a lot, and was never satisfied, until I spent a few weeks doing CSS & flexbox lessons from Lynda.com (free from my library).

    Now I can get mostly where I want to go without frameworks and it is very empowering. It's just another language, it's not that tough.

  • by mihok on 11/24/20, 6:57 PM

    Ive used http://getskeleton.com/ for a number of projects, its simple enough to get me 80% of the way there without a bunch of excess.

  • by iamunr on 11/24/20, 6:08 PM

  • by Sodman on 11/24/20, 7:30 PM

    Everyone's definition of 'clean' will vary, but when I think 'clean' I'm also thinking clean code. Some of the examples of clean templates given in the comments here pull down 2MB over the wire, ~500k-1MB of which is frequently JS, and that's before I've written a single line of custom functionality myself. For reference, React + react-dom is ~35kb gzipped.

    Does anyone have any examples of templates that focus on clean, lean code as well as final layout? I'm thinking framework-agnostic low-to-no JS, coupled with something that doesn't use thousands of lines of CSS for a homepage layout.

  • by enhdless on 11/24/20, 9:52 PM

    A lot of these comments are suggesting CSS frameworks. If you're looking for built-out templates, https://html5up.net/ provides decent ones.

  • by cosmotic on 11/24/20, 6:33 PM

    All CSS templates are beautiful, or at least thats what their authors say.

  • by tokyokawasemi on 11/24/20, 7:58 PM

    I made just such a template for myself recently. Sort of Medium-ish, single column; option for full width/bleed image: https://birddive.com/blog.2020-11-8.repurposable-templates.h...

  • by dmitriid on 11/24/20, 6:57 PM

  • by leonjza on 11/25/20, 10:50 AM

    Because I like the look, I typically end up "butchering" tabler[1]. Have used it on a few projects now.

    [1] https://preview.tabler.io/

  • by makstaks on 11/24/20, 6:55 PM

    I found these to be clean and easy to use. I converted the templates to React components without issue, but now they offer that too.

    https://cruip.com/

  • by actionowl on 11/25/20, 1:39 AM

    I'm surprised that no one has mentioned awsm.css yet: https://igoradamenko.github.io/awsm.css/

  • by alwillis on 11/25/20, 7:57 AM

    Stackbit has nice templates which can be used for a variety of static site generators: https://www.stackbit.com

  • by kulor on 11/24/20, 6:06 PM

    Do you mean clean design or markup?

  • by kenny87 on 11/24/20, 8:02 PM

    List of free tools and resources to create UIs: https://dev.to/davidepacilio/50-free-tools-and-resources-to-...

    Templates: https://cruip.com/

  • by tessierashpool on 11/24/20, 6:19 PM

    I resorted to buying a WordPress template and tearing out the PHP. the Jekyll community had a bunch of Jekyll templates back in the day, but they seemed a bit minimal and primitive for my needs today. then again, that could be what you want, depending on the definition of "beautiful and clean."

  • by Freeboots on 11/24/20, 6:40 PM

    Html5up.com or pixelarity.com are pretty good. One is a paid, attribution free version of the other.

  • by schpaencoder on 11/24/20, 7:16 PM

    I program in clojure and clojurescript. I use hiccup. All the beautiful stuff is right there.

  • by nikisweeting on 11/24/20, 6:52 PM

    I like browsing Wordpress theme libraries then cloning design elements I like in plain HTML/CSS myself.

    It's not quite the same as starting with an out-of-the-box template but it can help save a lot of design time to get inspiration.

  • by Diastatic on 11/24/20, 8:34 PM

    I have also had this problem. One of the css frameworks that I have enjoyed using is https://semantic-ui.com.

  • by kekub on 11/24/20, 6:13 PM

    I enjoyed working with MVP.css (https://andybrewer.github.io/mvp/) recently.

  • by tarboreus on 11/25/20, 7:53 PM

    I like Skeleton:

    http://getskeleton.com/

  • by throwburrito on 11/24/20, 7:16 PM

    Are you looking for a CSS framework? Here are some:

    https://github.com/troxler/awesome-css-frameworks

  • by mrjay42 on 11/24/20, 6:12 PM

    That's actually a very good question

  • by iopuy on 11/25/20, 11:03 AM

    bookmarked

  • by tshenolo on 11/24/20, 6:43 PM