Ian Hernandez, Author at Website Guides, Tips & Knowledge

How To Learn HTML In 2024

Ian Hernandez — Mon, 03 Jun 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Imagine you have a brilliant idea for your dynamic website, whether that’s a blog, an online store, or a portfolio featuring dynamic elements.

You know exactly how you want it to look, and since WordPress is used by 43.2% of websites, you choose to start with WordPress.

But you notice some limitations to the existing layouts.

What if you could:

Customize the layout to be exactly what you like
Update and customize your website on the fly without relying on someone else
Create engaging content that stands out from the competition
Troubleshoot issues and make quick fixes, saving time and money
Communicate more effectively with your technical team or collaborators

HTML and responsive web design techniques allow you to do all this and more while ensuring your website adapts to all device screens.

You may not have the time to learn complex coding languages or the budget to hire a web developer for every small task — But HTML is way easier than you might think!

In this guide, we’ll explore the many benefits of learning HTML, break down who can benefit from this skill (spoiler alert: everyone!), and look at the best free resources to help you learn HTML starting today.

An Introduction To HTML

HTML (HyperText Markup Language), a standard markup language created by Tim Berners-Lee, is the foundation of every website and one of the most popular programming languages.

The code tells browsers how to structure and display content like text, images, and links.

Since HTML is the foundation for online content, it’s a valuable skill to learn.

Although you can fully design a website without code, knowing HTML can help you customize web pages from scratch. You can use it to organize every website element, including dynamic elements like images, text, and tables.

Why You Should Consider Learning HTML

HTML is the fundamental building block of the web. All websites use HTML or a derivative of it. Understanding HTML will give you superpowers when using tools like Divi or Gutenberg in WordPress, or when creating email templates for marketing campaigns.

HTML “marks up” words and gives them meaning. HTML is important for accessibility because it provides the semantic structure that assistive technologies rely on to navigate and interpret web content effectively for users with disabilities.

HTML is important for SEO as search engines also use this semantic structure to easily crawl and index your website, helping improve a site’s visibility and ranking in search results.

Understanding HTML opens the door to numerous career opportunities in the tech industry. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, employment for web developers is projected to grow 16% between 2022-2032, much faster than the average across all occupations. This fundamental skill is essential not only for web development but also for roles in digital marketing, UX/UI design, and content management.

Familiarity with HTML helps you create, modify, and fix your website without depending on professional developers for every change or issue. This saves you time and money while giving you greater control over your website’s appearance and functionality.

Understanding HTML also prepares you for learning other essential programming languages, such as CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) and JavaScript.

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JavaScript

JavaScript is a flexible programming language that makes websites more engaging and interactive. It teams up with HTML and CSS to improve how users experience websites and apps.

These languages work hand-in-hand with HTML to create dynamic, interactive websites.

A strong command of HTML sets you apart from others in your field, especially those in which coding is not a required skill set. You’ll stand out as a founder, marketer, or non-tech employee who can create and modify web content.

Getting Started With HTML

Now that you know the benefits of learning HTML, you might wonder where to begin. The good news is that you don’t need fancy software or expensive courses to start.

All you need is a basic software setup, including a computer with a web browser and an online code editor like Notepad or TextEdit, and you’re ready to start your development journey.

Step 1: Understand The Basics Of Html Structure

HTML documents comprise a series of elements, each surrounded by opening and closing tags that tell the browser what content it contains.

Opening tags are written with the element name inside angle brackets, like this:
.
Content exists within the tags, like a paragraph or some text.
Closing tags are similar but include a forward slash before the element name, like this: .

Here’s an example of how a basic block-level element in an HTML structure displays paragraphs on a webpage.

When you open a tag in HTML code, you must close it similarly.

As you learn HTML, it’s essential to understand how common and complex elements work together to create a webpage’s structure.

A typical HTML document will include:

A declaration at the top to specify the version of HTML you’re using
An element that contains the entire document
A element for metadata like the page title and stylesheet links
A element that holds all the visible content on the page

Here’s a simple code snippet of an HTML document structure:

Notice how each element has an opening tag and a corresponding closing tag and how the components are nested inside each other to create the document structure.

Step 2: Learn The Basic HTML Elements For Structure And Content

Focus on mastering the foundational elements that form most web pages. These elements help you structure your content logically, making it easier for humans and search engines to understand.

Some basic HTML elements to master include anchor elements, which can help with creating interactive tutorials and linking to online tutorials:

Headings (
to
): Headings are essential block-level elements that help create a hierarchical structure for your content.
Paragraphs (
): Paragraphs break your text into readable chunks, like the spaced-out text you see on this page.
Types of Lists (

Tailwind Vs. Bootstrap: Which CSS Framework Do You Need?

Ian Hernandez — Wed, 29 May 2024 14:00:00 +0000

First impressions matter, and 94% of first impressions are related to visual design. This means that nearly all of your website’s initial impact comes down to how it looks.

There’s more to it than people liking or disliking your design.

46.1% of users judge the credibility of your brand based on your website’s visual appeal alone.

The bottom line? You need a visually appealing website — there’s just no way around it. This is where CSS frameworks help.

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CSS

Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is an essential coding language used for styling webpages. CSS helps you create beautiful pages by modifying the appearance of various elements, including font style, color, layout, and more.

These powerful tools can help you create stunning, responsive designs quickly and efficiently. Among the sea of options, two frameworks stand out: Tailwind CSS and Bootstrap.

But which one should you choose for your next project?

In this article, we’ll dive deep into the world of Tailwind vs. Bootstrap, exploring their strengths, weaknesses, and unique features.

By the end, you’ll have a clear understanding of which framework best suits your needs, empowering you to create websites that not only captivate users but also establish your brand’s credibility.

What Are CSS Frameworks?

Before we get into the nitty-gritty of Tailwind vs. Bootstrap, let’s take a step back and remind ourselves what CSS frameworks are all about.

Essentially, CSS frameworks are pre-written collections of CSS code that simplify and speed up website development.

Instead of starting from scratch every time, you can use these frameworks to create beautiful, responsive designs with minimal effort. We can’t overstate how important responsive design is. In fact, according to a study by GoodFirms, non-responsive design is the primary reason why people may be leaving your website.

Think of it like having a toolbox filled with all the essentials you need to build a house. You could always go out and buy each tool individually, but why not save yourself the hassle and get everything in one convenient package?

That’s what CSS frameworks do for web development.

Bootstrap: The Reliable Classic

First up, let’s talk about Bootstrap.

Bootstrap has been around since 2011 and has become a staple in the web development world. It’s like the comfort food of CSS frameworks: reliable, familiar, and always satisfying.

One of the biggest advantages of Bootstrap is its extensive library of pre-built components.

From navbars and buttons to carousels and modals, Bootstrap has you covered. These components are designed to work seamlessly together, so you can create a cohesive, professional-looking website in no time.

But wait, there’s more! Bootstrap also comes with a powerful grid system that makes it easy to create responsive layouts. With just a few classes, your website can look fantastic on any device, whether it’s a desktop computer, a tablet, or a smartphone.

Another reason Bootstrap is so popular is its extensive documentation and community support. If you ever get stuck or have a question, chances are someone else has already asked (and answered) it on Stack Overflow or the Bootstrap forums. Plus, with so many developers using Bootstrap, you’ll find plenty of tutorials, templates, and plugins to help you along the way.

Of course, no tool is perfect, and Bootstrap has its limitations. Some developers argue that it’s too opinionated, meaning that it can be difficult to customize if you want to stray too far from the default styles. Others point out that Bootstrap’s file size can be rather large, which can slow down your website’s loading times.

Tailwind CSS: The New Kid On The Block

Now, let’s move on to Tailwind CSS. This relatively new framework has been making waves in the web development community — and for good reason.

Unlike Bootstrap, which relies heavily on pre-built components, Tailwind takes a different approach. It provides a set of low-level utility classes that you can use to build your own custom designs.

This means you have complete control over the look and feel of your website, without being constrained by someone else’s design decisions. However, you won’t find a lot of pre-built templates for page sections.

So, Tailwind’s utility classes might seem a bit overwhelming.

Instead of using semantic class names like btn-primary, you’ll see things like bg-blue-500 and px-4. As you get used to it, you’ll start to appreciate the flexibility and power that comes with this approach.

One of the biggest advantages of Tailwind is its ability to create responsive designs with ease. You can easily specify different styles for different screen sizes, all without leaving your HTML. This makes it incredibly easy to create complex, adaptive layouts that look great on any device.

Another thing that sets Tailwind apart is its focus on performance. The framework is designed to be as lightweight as possible, with a minimal footprint that won’t slow down your website. Plus, with features like tree-shaking and purging, you can make sure that only the classes you actually use end up in your final CSS file.

Then again, like Bootstrap, Tailwind too, isn’t perfect.

Some developers find the learning curve to be a bit steeper, especially if they’re used to more traditional CSS frameworks. And because Tailwind relies so heavily on utility classes, your HTML can start to feel a bit cluttered and harder to read.

How do you then select the right framework?

Choosing The Right Framework For Your Project

Let’s dive a little deeper into how to choose the right framework for your project. Based on what we discussed earlier, the decision depends on your specific needs and goals. To help you make the right decision, let’s explore a few key factors.

Project Complexity And Scalability

One of the first things to consider is the complexity and scalability of your project. If you’re building a simple, one-page website or a small personal blog, Bootstrap might be the way to go. Its pre-built components and straightforward grid system make it easy to get up and running quickly.

However, if you’re working on a more complex application or a large-scale website with a lot of custom functionality, Tailwind might be a better fit. Its utility-first approach allows you to create highly customized designs that can scale as your project grows.

Here’s an example of how you might create a simple button in Bootstrap vs.Tailwind:

Bootstrap:

Tailwind:

Notice the Bootstrap example is more concise and relies on a pre-defined class (btn-primary), while the Tailwind example uses a combination of utility classes to achieve the same result.

This flexibility can be especially valuable as your project becomes more complex and requires more granular control over styles.

Note: While you can customize Bootstrap styles, it’s more work and you might just write the CSS yourself. Tailwind is quite nice in this case because of its built-in flexibility.

Design Flexibility And Consistency

If you’re working with a design team or following strict brand guidelines, Tailwind’s utility-first approach can be a great fit for you.

It allows you to create custom designs that match your exact specifications, without being limited by pre-defined components or styles.

On the other hand, if you’re looking for a more standardized, consistent look and feel across your site, Bootstrap’s pre-built components can be a good choice. They provide a solid foundation that you can customize as needed, while still maintaining a cohesive overall design.

Here’s an example of how you might create a card component with a button in Bootstrap vs. Tailwind:

Bootstrap:


  
  
    Card title
    Some quick example text to build on the card title and make up the bulk of the card's content.
    Go somewhere

Tailwind:



   
      
   
   
      Card title
      
         Some quick example text to build on the card title and make up the bulk of the card's content.
      
   
   
      
      Go somewhere

Above, you’ll see that the Bootstrap example uses the pre-defined card class and its associated sub-components (card-img-top, card-body, etc.) to create a consistent card layout.

The Tailwind example, on the other hand, uses a combination of utility classes to achieve a similar result, but with more fine-grained control over the specific styles applied.

Our take: Tailwind takes this round for its out-of-the-box customizability. If you’re just starting with designing, you may not take much notice of the design nuances when using Bootstrap. But as you start creating more complex components, the limitations start to show, and here’s where Tailwind’s utility classes can make things much easier in the long run.

Learning Curve And Developer Experience

It’s also worth considering the learning curve and developer experience associated with each framework. If you or your team are already familiar with Bootstrap, it might make sense to stick with what you know.

Bootstrap has a large community and a wealth of resources available, which can make it easier to get started and find answers to common questions.

Tailwind, on the other hand, has a bit of an uphill learning curve, especially if you’re not used to thinking in terms of utility classes. However, once you get the hang of it, many developers find that Tailwind’s approach is more intuitive and efficient in the long run.

Here’s an example of how you might create a responsive navigation bar in Bootstrap vs. Tailwind:

Bootstrap:


  
    Navbar
    
    
      
        
          Home
        
        
          Link
        
        
          
            Dropdown
          
          
            Action
            Another action
            
            Something else here
          
        
        
          Disabled

Tailwind:


  
    
    Tailwind
  
  
    
  
  
    
       Docs 
       Examples 
       Blog 
    
    
      Download

The Bootstrap example uses a combination of pre-defined classes (navbar, navbar-expand, navbar-light, etc.) to create a responsive navigation bar with a toggler button for smaller screens. The Tailwind example, in contrast, uses a combination of utility classes for similar results, but with a greater level of control over style and layout.

Our take: Bootstrap is much easier for beginners to pick up. The only downside to using Bootstrap is that you may create websites that look similar to others without customizing the styles. With Tailwind, the styles are independent of the components, which provides a lot more flexibility; meaning, you end up with fairly unique layouts just by combining the existing classes.

Performance Considerations

Considering that a load time of one second to three seconds increases bounce rates by 32%, it makes sense to choose the fastest framework possible.

The default Tailwind configuration comes with 36.4KB minified and g-zipped. Compared to Bootstrap at 22.1KB , Tailwind is 14.3KB heavier.

You may think, ”Well, it seems we already have a winner, right?”

Not so fast.

Tailwind generates your styles based on the specific utility classes you use in your HTML, rather than including a large set of pre-defined styles that may or may not be used.

So, while Tailwind is heavier by default, it offers excellent performance optimization techniques that help it perform with fewer lines of CSS code and a much smaller file size.

Also, Tailwind lets you pre-select the number of screen sizes you want to cater to. For instance, if all you want to properly cater to is a laptop screen and mobile users, just pick those.

Here’s how screen sizes can further affect your stylesheet file size:

5 screen sizes (default): 36.4KB
4 screen sizes: 29.4KB
3 screen sizes: 22.4KB
2 screen sizes: 15.4KB
1 screen size: 8.4KB

To further improve this, Tailwind offers PurgeCSS. This tool scans the specified files (HTML, Vue, JSX, etc.) and removes any unused Tailwind classes from the final CSS build. The result? A smaller file size and better performance.

Our take: Without optimizations, Bootstrap does load faster. But Tailwind’s designers handle this problem very effectively and the additional optimization strategies can make your overall page extremely lightweight. We have to give this round to Tailwind.

So, Why Not Both Frameworks?

“Why do I have to choose just one? Can’t I use both, Bootstrap and Tailwind, in the same project?”

The short answer is: yes, you absolutely can! In fact, many developers find that combining the two frameworks gives them the best of both worlds.

For example, you might use Bootstrap’s grid system and pre-built components for the overall structure and layout of your site, but then use Tailwind’s utility classes to fine-tune the styles and create custom elements. This approach can help you strike a balance between rapid development and granular control.

Of course, mixing frameworks can also introduce some complexity and potential conflicts. So you need to know both frameworks thoroughly before knowing what parts of each framework work well together.

For instance, since both frameworks have the same CSS classes, you may see visual glitches on different browsers and devices.

The Future Of CSS Frameworks

Being in the front-end web dev space, it’s quite exciting to see these CSS frameworks coming in and making things easy to build. Between Bootstrap and Tailwind, Google Trends shows that Bootstrap has been dropping in popularity from its peaks in 2017 and Tailwind is starting to pick up.

However, these CSS frameworks are just the beginning.

We’re also seeing other frameworks that translate JavaScript to CSS, like Emotion.sh. This helps you to write your styles directly in your JavaScript code, which can make it easier to create reusable, modular components. They’re not quite the same as traditional CSS frameworks but they’re definitely worth keeping an eye on.

Wrapping Up

Phew, that was a lot to take in! But hopefully, by now, you have a better understanding of what Tailwind CSS and Bootstrap are all about, and how they can help you create amazing websites.

At the end of the day, the choice between these two frameworks (or any others) comes down to your specific needs and preferences. There’s no one-size-fits-all solution, and what works for one project might not be the best fit for another.

The important thing is to keep learning, experimenting, and pushing yourself to try new things. Whether you’re a die-hard Bootstrap fan or a Tailwind convert, there’s always room to grow and improve as a web developer.

So go forth and build something awesome! And remember, no matter which framework you choose, the most important thing is to have fun and enjoy the process. Happy coding!

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12 Outstanding Accessible Website Examples That Raise The Bar

Ian Hernandez — Mon, 20 May 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Here at DreamHost, we believe everyone should be able to use any website on the internet, regardless of impairment or disability. However, while we care about web accessibility, we also understand that designing a website that’s both accessible and visually attractive can be challenging.

The good news is that you can design accessible websites without sacrificing visual impact. In fact, some of the most stunning websites out there are designed specifically to be more accessible to people with disabilities — and we could all learn a thing or two from them.

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Accessibility

Accessibility is the practice of making a website accessible to as many users as possible. Accessible websites can be viewed by anyone on any device.

In this post, we’ll start by showing you what strong web accessibility looks like, and cover some web accessibility standards designed to help democratize access to websites. Then we’ll show you 12 of the best web accessibility examples on the internet, including some popular websites that have committed to accessibility, and see what they can teach us.

Let’s get started!

What Great Web Accessibility Looks Like

According to The World Bank, around a billion people, or 15% of the global population, have some form of disability. These can include:

Visual impairments: Some users have a visual disability that inhibits their ability to see clearly or perceive color contrast ratios. A range of people may fall into this category, including blind users or those with color blindness. For users with visual impairments, you might use audio descriptions or accessible color combinations (for example, avoid using dark text on dark background colors).
Hearing impairments: Users with hearing impairments may include D/deaf people and those with partial hearing loss (hard of hearing/HoH). Captions for audio content can provide these users with a more accessible experience.
Physical disabilities: Some people have mobility impairments that can impact their dexterity and ability to make precise movements, possibly making using a mouse difficult. Those with physical disabilities may be assistive technology users. Ensure your site is properly coded for assistive devices to provide accessible content for users with physical disabilities.
Cognitive disabilities: Some users may have cognitive impairments like dyslexia, dementia, or an auditory processing disorder. You may consider using a specific font, like Dyslexie. You should also ensure that any audio content has a transcript available for those with auditory processing impairments.

It’s important to keep all of these different abilities in mind when creating your website to make sure there aren’t barriers for disabled users. To help web designers with this, W3C has developed a set of Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG).

Solid web accessibility means adhering to these guidelines and carefully following the four guiding principles of accessible design. These guiding principles state that all websites should be:

Perceivable
Operable
Understandable
Robust

Ensuring that your website is “operable” might mean implementing keyboard-friendly navigation for people who can’t use a mouse. “Perceivable” could mean using high-contrast colors for people with visual impairments.

Ready to see what these principles look like in practice? Below, we have 12 examples of websites that are doing accessible design right.

12 Great Web Accessibility Examples To Inspire You

Here, you’ll find some of our favorite web accessibility examples. These 12 websites are examples of accessible web design at its best.

1. Scope

Scope is a disability equality charity based in England and Wales dedicated to creating a fairer, more equal society. As a champion of disability equality, you’d expect that this organization’s website would be as accessible as possible — and it is.

Not only does it fully adhere to WCAG 2.0 and WCAG 2.1 guidelines, but the site is even customizable for individual users. For example, users can change the site’s colors, increase the text size, or even turn on text narration to have the content read aloud.

If you look at the top-left section of the home page, you’ll see an Accessibility tab. Click on this, and the site will bring you to its accessibility page, which includes instructions on how to adapt the experience to your needs, links to assistive technologies, and a list of known accessibility issues that are being worked on.

Scope uses short sentences and large, clean fonts throughout the site for maximum readability. Plus, the site is fully compatible with screen reader software.

Despite already being a fantastic example of website accessibility, the team at Scope continues to make improvements. Every four months, they test the website for accessibility and make updates wherever necessary.

2. Harvard University

Harvard’s education isn’t its only strong suit. The world-renowned university’s website also stands out for its accessibility, offering an army of reading tools, multilingual video subtitles, and carefully curated color schemes that meet the needs of color-blind visitors.

Harvard’s navigation menu also gets points for accessibility. It’s simple but effective, with large, easy-to-read text in a high-contrast color. It’s also clear and easy to find.

3. Paralympic.org

Paralympic.org is the official website of the International Paralympic Committee (IPC). The IPC is a powerful advocate of social inclusion, and its website is a testament to that.

It features keyboard-friendly tab navigation and an instant “scroll-to-top” arrow button to make it easy to move around the page. Images and videos are large and prominently visible, and there’s plenty of white space to make visual elements stand out.

If you go to the home page, you’ll notice a text size adjuster in the top-right corner of the screen. This is easily visible and allows users with visual impairments to quickly customize the size of the text to meet their needs.

4. Walmart

One of the WCAG’s requirements for accessible websites is that they need to be “focus visible,” meaning that the part of the site that is in use is highlighted. Walmart’s website is a great example of this. It has a ton of interactive elements like buttons, links, and form fields — but visitors can only focus on one at a time, and the one they’re interacting with is distinctly highlighted for maximum visibility.

It’s also easy to navigate between different interactive elements, from the navigation menu to different buttons, the search bar, links to your account page and shopping cart, and more, whether you use mouse or keyboard navigation.

5. KidsWish

KidsWish is an organization that provides therapy, support services, and an annual Christmas party for children who are disadvantaged or have a disability. It caters to many people with different disabilities, so naturally, their developers built a website that was as accessible as possible.

And guess what? They nailed it. The KidsWish website is wonderfully designed, with a logical structure, keyboard-friendly navigation, high-contrast colors, and large text. Plus, it’s easy to browse with prominent, clickable elements.

The design is also very child-friendly. It boasts a bright, bold color scheme and tons of fun graphics.

6. Nomensa

Nomensa is a strategic user experience (UX) design agency based in London. They put such a focus on accessible design, that they offer a web accessibility test that their current and prospective customers can take to see how their sites measure up against international standards.

The agency then offers design services to help customers correct any issues discovered by the accessibility testing tool.

Get this: the firm’s co-founder is a co-chair of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and helped write the WCAG guidelines that direct web accessibility best practices. It’s no wonder Nomensa takes accessibility solutions so seriously!

7. Ovo Energy

Ovo Energy is a UK-based energy company. Its website features information about tariffs and bundles and includes a main login portal for customers to service their accounts.

The company has done a wonderful job of making the site accessible to all by using large readable text and a clear interface. It also incorporates keyboard navigation to make it easy to get around the site.

The designers went above and beyond to ensure that the site is accessible to visually- and hearing-impaired users. There are SignVideo services for British Sign Language users, and the color contrast meets WCAG guidelines.

Customers can also request bills in Braille and larger formats. In addition to all of this, the site is compatible with assistive technology.

8. Bleacher Report

Sports news site Bleacher Report does something different that’s extremely helpful for users who access their site using screen readers or keyboard controls. The first focus points are the cookies notification, Privacy Policy, and Terms of Use, and if you click on the external link for these, they open in a new window.

To users without disabilities, this may not seem like a big deal, but this gives all visitors to Bleacher Report’s site access to important legal information. On most sites, the legal and cookies alerts are at the bottom of the page, which means visitors who use keyboard controls or screen readers get to them at the end of their visit, after browsing through the rest of the site. This is a small change with a big impact for people with disabilities.

9. BBC iPlayer

BBC iPlayer is the BBC’s online streaming service. Users watch programs online on its website. It’s also another fantastic web accessibility example that we can all learn from.

First, the website is both very easy to navigate and compatible with assistive technology. You can move around the page by clicking on the Tab button. Navigating over the iPlayer logo brings up an option for Accessibility help, which links to a resource page with a lot of useful information for users with disabilities.

The content is logically laid out, and all buttons use a clear visual design with high-contrast colors. There are also keyboard and mouse-accessible tooltips that provide extra information for users and descriptive alt text for all images.

The video content is also accessible. All shows on BBC iPlayer feature subtitles. There are also audio-described and signed content categories.

10. Metropolitan Transportation Authority

In addition to having a responsive site that’s easy to use on devices with screens of all sizes, New York City’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority also has a built-in search experience that helps users find the information they’re looking for more quickly and easily. How? The search function still provides results even if users misspell words or provide inputs in the wrong formats.

For example, if a user inputs an address or neighborhood into the MTA’s trip planner with a typo, the search bar will still suggest addresses based on its best guess of what the user was looking for.

11. NSW Government

The NSW Government website is the government hub for the New South Wales area of Australia. The website is designed to be user-friendly for residents from all backgrounds and abilities.

The website features tab navigation, making it simple to navigate pages using a keyboard or screen reader. Thanks to large fonts and contrasting colors, it’s also extremely readable and gets points for being compatible with assistive technology.

12. GOV.UK

GOV.UK is the central hub for all U.K. government web pages. The site provides information about everything from disability aid and benefits to visa and immigration support.

The U.K. Government has done an amazing job of making its site accessible for everyone who needs it. The website features keyboard navigation and ARIA attributes, so you can find pages easily. Furthermore, it’s designed to support 300% zoom for visually-impaired readers.

Make An Accessibility Statement

Making sure your website is as accessible as possible is both a moral and a professional obligation. It might seem like a challenge, but we promise you — it’s worth it. The examples above will guide you in creating an inclusive website that will be accessible to all users.

Ready to build your accessible website? Let us take care of the technical side for you, so you can focus more of your time and energy on what matters: the design. Sign up for our Shared Unlimited Hosting Plan and get unlimited, secure hosting for all of your websites.

Note: We do extensive research on disability-inclusive language for our articles. Remember to utilize your resources when creating accessible content, and when in doubt, always ask.

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Your Complete Bootstrap Primer

Ian Hernandez — Mon, 29 Apr 2024 14:00:00 +0000

Let’s say you need to build an analytics dashboard for your business.

You need one that looks professional and works well on different devices, but you don’t have a lot of time to design everything from scratch.

This is where a framework like Bootstrap comes in. It gives you a head start on building responsive websites. Instead of staring at a blank page, you start with a grid and pre-built components. It’s like having a bunch of Legos. You’ve still got to put them together, but the hard part of making all the individual pieces is already done.

If Bootstrap sounds like a good fit for your project, this guide is for you. We’ll take you through everything you need to know to start building websites with Bootstrap.

Let’s get started!

What Is Bootstrap?

Bootstrap is a free, open-source CSS framework that provides a collection of pre-built components, styles, and tools for creating responsive and consistent web designs. Developed by Twitter engineers Mark Otto and Jacob Thornton in 2011, it has since become one of the go-to frameworks for web developers worldwide.

Bootstrap is currently the sixth most popular framework in the top million sites in the JavaScript libraries category.

While jQuery and React have received much attention in recent years, over 1.2 million websites worldwide still use Bootstrap.

This framework is mobile-first, meaning it prioritizes the layout and styling for smaller screens and progressively enhances the design for larger screens. Because of this approach, all websites built using Bootstrap are responsive across screen sizes by default.

What Makes Bootstrap Different?

Bootstrap stands out from other CSS frameworks in a few key ways.

Its pre-made components, such as navbars, buttons, forms, and cards, save developers a lot of time. Bootstrap’s responsive grid system makes it easy to create layouts that look good on different screen sizes, from big desktop monitors to small phone screens.

Every component of Bootstrap is customizable, so you can change colors and sizes to fit your specific design. This approach offers several advantages:

Rapid development: With a wide range of pre-built components and utility classes, developers can quickly prototype and build web pages without spending excessive time on custom CSS.
Consistent design: Bootstrap enforces a consistent design language across projects, ensuring a cohesive and professional look and feel.
Responsive by default: Bootstrap’s components and grid system are designed to be responsive, adapting to different screen sizes and devices without the need for extensive custom media queries.
Cross-browser compatibility: Bootstrap takes care of cross-browser compatibility issues, allowing developers to focus on building functionality rather than worrying about browser inconsistencies.

However, Bootstrap, like any framework, isn’t one size fits all.

Websites built with Bootstrap look similar with different layouts simply because the UI elements are reused. The framework also comes with a lot of CSS and JavaScript that you might not use, which can slow down your website if you’re not careful. There’s also a learning curve in adopting the classes in the framework.

Despite these potential drawbacks, Bootstrap is still a powerful and popular tool for web development, especially if you want to start quickly. Let’s take a look at how to do just that.

Getting Started With Bootstrap

Before we talk about the basics, here are three ways to import the framework:

Download the compiled CSS and JavaScript files from the official Bootstrap website and link to them in your HTML file.
Use a Content Delivery Network (CDN) to load Bootstrap from a remote server.
Install Bootstrap via a package manager like npm if you’re using a build tool.

For simplicity, let’s use the CDN method. Add the following lines inside the tag of your HTML file:

Then, add the following line just before the closing tag.

Note: You need to add these lines for all the following code examples to work.

The Bootstrap Grid System

The Bootstrap grid system is one of its core features, enabling the creation of responsive layouts that adapt effortlessly to different screen sizes.

It is based on a 12-column layout and uses predefined classes to specify how elements should behave at various breakpoints.

Basic Grid

The basic grid is a simple frame with equal-width columns that get taller when the content inside is longer. To create a basic one, start with a container

and add rows and columns. Here’s an example:


  
    
      
        Column 1
        Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit.
      
    
    
      
        Column 2
        Pellentesque euismod dapibus odio, at volutpat sapien.
      
    
    
      
        Column 3
        Sed tincidunt neque vel risus faucibus fringilla.

As you see, we’ve created three equal-width columns. Bootstrap handles the padding, spacing between columns, and the alignment.

Grid Column Length

What if you want to control the length of the column? Bootstrap has 12 unit settings that let you decide how wide or how narrow a column can be. For example, to create a row with two columns where the first column takes up eight units and the second column takes up four units, you can do the following:


  
    
      
        Wider Column
        Nunc vitae metus non velit aliquam rhoncus vel in leo.
      
    
    
      
        Narrower Column
        Fusce nec tellus sed augue semper porta.

As you may note, there’s a difference in the column classes where the wider column has class col-8 and the narrower column is col-4.

Responsive Column Width

Bootstrap also provides responsive classes that allow you to specify different column widths for different screen sizes. These classes are based on breakpoints, which are predefined screen widths. The available breakpoints are:

xs (extra small): Less than 576px
sm (small): 576px and up
md (medium): 768px and up
lg (large): 992px and up
xl (extra large): 1200px and up
xxl (extra extra large): 1400px and up

To use responsive classes, append the breakpoint abbreviation to the col- prefix. For example:


  
    
      
        Column 1
        Maecenas sed diam eget risus varius blandit sit amet non magna.
      
    
    
      
        Column 2
        Donec id elit non mi porta gravida at eget metus.

We’ve added the col-md-6 width here, so the columns will automatically resize whenever the screen size is 768px and above.

Bootstrap Components

Bootstrap offers a wide range of pre-built components for assembling user interfaces quickly. These components are responsive and customizable. Let’s explore some commonly used ones.

Buttons

Bootstrap provides well-designed button styles out of the box. To create a button, add the btn class to a Success Link Button

Cards

Cards are versatile containers for content like images, text, and buttons. They provide a structured way to present information.


  
  
    Card Title
    Some quick example text to build on the card title.
    Go somewhere

Here, you can see a card with an image at the top, followed by a title, some text, and a button. The card-img-top class positions the image at the top of the card, while the card-body class provides padding and spacing for the content inside the card.

Navbar

The navbar component is a responsive navigation header with branding, links, forms, and more. It automatically collapses on smaller screens and provides a toggler button to expand the menu.


  
    My Website
    
    
      
        
          Home
        
        
          Features
        
        
          Pricing

With this simple code snippet, we created a toggle menu button for small screens and a list of navigation links.

The navbar-expand-lg class specifies that the navbar should expand on large screens and collapse on smaller ones. The navbar-light and bg-light classes set the color scheme for the navbar. Compare that to creating the menu with plain CSS, and you’ll understand how many steps Bootstrap saved us.

Forms

Moving on to forms, Bootstrap has a range of form controls and layout options to create interactive and accessible forms.

You can easily style form elements like input fields, checkboxes, radio buttons, and more.


  
    Email address
    
    We'll never share your email with anyone else.
  
  
    Password
    
  
  
    
    Check me out

Bootstrap styling has auto-aligned and beautified this form layout from behind the scenes.

This form example includes an email input field, a password input field, a checkbox, and a submit button. The form-label class styles the labels, while the form-control class styles the input fields. The mb-3 class adds a bottom margin to the form groups for spacing.

Creating A Simple Analytics Dashboard With Bootstrap

Now that we’ve covered the basics, let’s put it all together and build a real-world example: an analytics dashboard.

DreamHost Glossary

Analytics

Analytics is the field of data interpretation, typically used to help guide strategy. When applied to SEO, this can include keyword research as well as website traffic and competitor analysis. The goal of SEO analytics is to improve a website’s ranking in results pages, and ultimately drive more traffic.

Imagine you’re building a web application that displays analytics data for a business. The dashboard will include a header with a logo and navigation, a main content area with data, and a footer with additional links.

Let’s break this down into manageable sections using plain language that’s easy to follow.

Setting Up The HTML

First things first, we need to set up our HTML file.

Start by creating a new file and adding the basic structure, like the declaration and the , , and tags. In the section, remember to specify the character encoding, viewport, and page title.

Here’s what your HTML should look like so far, including the Bootstrap.css (imported in the ) and the Bootstrap.js (imported right before closing ) files called into the HTML:




  
  
  Analytics Dashboard

Adding The Header Navigation

Next up, let’s create a header with a navigation bar. Use the

tag, and add a

element inside it. Bootstrap’s navbar component is perfect for this. Then, include a logo and some navigation links, like “Overview,” “Reports,” and “Settings.”

Paste this header code inside the tags


  
    
      Analytics Dashboard
      
      
        
          
            Overview
          
          
            Reports
          
          
            Settings

Here’s what the navigation bar will look like:

The navbar-expand-lg class makes the navigation responsive, collapsing on smaller screens.

We used navbar-dark and bg-dark to give it a sleek, dark appearance. The navigation links are in an unordered list, and ms-auto pushes them to the right side of the navbar.

Creating The Main Content Area

Time to tackle the main content! Let’s use the

tag and create a two-column layout with Bootstrap’s grid system.

The left column will hold cards for displaying charts or graphs, and the right column will have a card showing key metrics. Paste this code right below the

closing tag.

To make this example more interactive, let’s add Chart.js to show user metrics. Add this script to your .

Remember, you can skip adding this script and the sample data if you just want to see how Bootstrap works. We’re adding it so the boxes aren’t empty.

Now, let’s write the bootstrap columns to give space for the charts and the data metrics.


    
      
        
          
            Website Traffic
            
          
        
        
          
            User Acquisition
            
          
        
      
      
        
          
            Key Metrics
            
              Total Users: 10,000
              New Users: 500
              Bounce Rate: 25%

Finally, paste this sample data right before the closing body tag. Again, this is not necessary if you only want to see Bootstrap columns in action. We’re adding this sample data for Chart.js to pick up the information and show it on an interactive chart.

Putting it all together, you’ll see a beautiful dashboard with a line chart and a bar chart showing growth in our key metrics. The key metrics are also visible on the right side in table format.

We’ve used the container class to center the content and add some padding. The row class creates a row, and col-md-* classes define the column widths.

The left column (col-md-8) has two cards for charts, while the right column (col-md-4) has a card with key metrics in a list group.

Adding The Footer

Almost there!

Let’s add a footer with some copyright info and links. We’ll use the

tag and Bootstrap’s grid system and spacing utilities to control the layout and padding.


  
    
      
        © 2023 Analytics Dashboard. All rights reserved.
      
      
        Privacy Policy
        Terms of Service

You should now see this footer added to the button of your dashboard.

The bg-light class gives the footer a light background color, and py-3 adds vertical padding. We’ve split the footer into two columns: one for the copyright notice and one for the links. The text-md-end class aligns the links to the right on medium-sized screens and larger ones.

Putting It All Together

Let’s combine the code now so you can see the complete picture.




  
  
  Analytics Dashboard
  
  
  



  
    
      Analytics Dashboard
      
      
        
          
            Overview
          
          
            Reports
          
          
            Settings
          
        
      
    
  

  
    
      
        
          
            Website Traffic
            
          
        
        
          
            User Acquisition
            
          
        
      
      
        
          
            Key Metrics
            
              Total Users: 10,000
              New Users: 500
              Bounce Rate: 25%
            
          
        
      
    
  



  
    
      
        © 2023 Analytics Dashboard. All rights reserved.
      
      
        Privacy Policy
        Terms of Service

As you can see, the responsive navigation bar is at the top, with the charts directly below it. Bootstrap handles the padding and spacing between grid items, which you can see on your dashboard metrics.

At the bottom of the screen is the footer with the Privacy Policy and Terms of Service links.

You’ve just created a simple analytics dashboard using Bootstrap. But Bootstrap has tons of components we haven’t even touched upon yet. Be sure to explore the Bootstrap components library to find reusable components for your future projects.

A Toolkit For Responsive Web Design

Bootstrap is a popular framework that helps web developers quickly create responsive websites. It has a grid system, pre-built components, and customization options, making it easier to develop websites that look good on different devices.

Developers with all levels of experience use Bootstrap. It’s pretty easy to learn, but it’s powerful enough to handle big projects. There’s a big community of Bootstrap users for support and lots of resources to help you learn the framework.

When you build a Bootstrap site, you need a good hosting company, too. DreamHost has a virtual private server (VPS) option that works perfectly. It’s flexible and can handle different needs as your Bootstrap site grows.

Why not give Bootstrap a shot and see what you can create? With the right tools and a hosting plan from a company like Dreamhost, you can make responsive websites in no time.

Create a Website for All

We make sure your website is fast and secure so you can focus on the important stuff.

Choose Your Plan

The post Your Complete Bootstrap Primer appeared first on Website Guides, Tips & Knowledge.

Your Complete Tailwind CSS Primer

Ian Hernandez — Fri, 19 Apr 2024 14:00:00 +0000

CSS frameworks have changed the way developers approach web development by providing pre-built components and styles. However, many frameworks come with opinionated designs and bloated stylesheets which limit customization.

Tailwind CSS takes a different approach. As a utility-first CSS framework, it provides low-level utility classes that allow developers to build custom designs without being constrained by pre-defined components.

With over 675,375 websites using Tailwind CSS and over 8.61 million dependent repositories, Tailwind has become more than just another CSS framework.

In this article, we’ll go over understanding the concepts of Tailwind CSS, the setup process, and practical usage so you can start building your beautiful custom UIs without learning CSS.

Let’s get started!

What Is Tailwind CSS?

Tailwind CSS is a highly customizable, low-level CSS framework that provides a set of utility classes to rapidly build custom user interfaces. It was first developed and released by Adam Wathan in 2017.

Since then, Tailwind has seen an upward trajectory in websites being built using the Tailwind library.

While the growth currently seems to have slowed as per the BuiltWith charts, the framework itself is regularly updated with new features, classes, and more.

According to BuiltWith’s tech stack data, over 100,000 websites in the US alone use Tailwind to build their user interfaces along with the UK, Indonesia, Germany, and other countries making it to the top 10 users of this library.

The core philosophy behind Tailwind CSS is to provide developers with a set of building blocks rather than pre-built components. These building blocks are small, single-purpose utility classes that can be combined to create complex and responsive layouts.

This approach allows for greater flexibility and control over the design, as you can customize every aspect of your UI without being limited by the framework’s opinionated styles.

What Makes Tailwind CSS Different?

Traditionally, when working with CSS, developers write custom classes in separate stylesheets to style their HTML elements. This approach can lead to large CSS files and make maintaining and updating styles across a project challenging.

Tailwind provides a comprehensive set of utility classes that can be applied directly to HTML elements. These classes are highly composable, allowing developers to build complex, custom designs without writing a single line of custom CSS.

For example, instead of writing a custom CSS class to style a button, you can use Tailwind’s pre-defined classes like this:

This approach has several benefits:

Faster development: The pre-defined classes help developers rapidly build and iterate on designs without constantly switching between HTML and CSS files.
Consistent styling: Tailwind provides a standardized set of classes, which helps maintain consistency in design across a project.
Smaller CSS files: Because styles are applied directly in the HTML, there’s no need for large, custom CSS files.
Easier maintenance: With styles defined in the HTML, it’s easier to see how changes will affect a specific element without hunting through separate CSS files.
Better performance: Many modern styling systems like Emotion or Styled Components rely on javascript (usually during run-time, slower performance) to render your css. Tailwind is just CSS at the end of the day.

Tailwind turned me into a complete stack developer 🤝”
— Boris Lepikhin

Getting Started With Tailwind CSS

Before we jump into examples, let’s set up a basic project with Tailwind CSS. We’ll assume you have some familiarity with HTML and CSS. Also, you need to have npm installed on your system. Once you’re done, you’re good to go ahead!

Create a new directory for your project and navigate into it:

mkdir my-tailwind-project
cd my-tailwind-project

Initialize a new npm project and install Tailwind CSS:

npm init -y
npm install -D tailwindcss

Create a tailwind.config.js file:

npx tailwindcss init

Create an input.css file and add the following:

@tailwind base;
@tailwind components;
@tailwind utilities;

Update your tailwind.config.js file to process your input.css:

module.exports = {
  content: ["./src/**/*.{html,js}"],
  theme: {
    extend: {},
  },
  plugins: [],
}

Create an index.html file in a src directory and add the following:



  
    
  
  
    Welcome to Tailwind CSS!

Build your CSS:

npx tailwindcss -i ./src/input.css -o ./src/output.css --watch

Now, when you open index.html in your browser, you should see a large, bold heading that says Welcome to Tailwind CSS!

Congratulations, you’ve set up your first Tailwind project!

Tailwind CSS Utility Classes

Tailwind CSS provides a wide range of utility classes that cover various aspects of styling, such as layout, spacing, typography, colors, and more. These classes follow a naming convention that makes it intuitive to understand their purpose.

DreamHost Glossary

Typography

Typography is a process of arranging a typeface in variations of font, size, and spacing. This involves making text’s appearance, style, and arrangement readable and visually pleasing.

Let’s explore some commonly used utility classes in Tailwind CSS.

Tailwind Layout Classes

flex: Applies a flex container.
grid: Applies a grid container.
block: Displays an element as a block-level element.
inline: Displays an element as an inline-level element.

Example:


  Item 1
  Item 2

Tailwind Spacing Classes

m-{size}: Applies margin on all sides.
p-{size}: Applies padding on all sides.
mx-{size}: Applies margin on the left and right.
py-{size}: Applies padding on the top and bottom.

Example:


  Content with margin and padding

Tailwind Typography Classes

text-{size}: Sets the font size.
font-{weight}: Sets the font weight.
text-{color}: Sets the text color.
uppercase, lowercase, capitalize: Transforms text case.

Example:


  Styled text

Tailwind Colors

Tailwind CSS provides a default color palette that can be customized. Colors are defined using a combination of the color name and shade.

bg-{color}-{shade}: Sets the background color.
text-{color}-{shade}: Sets the text color.
border-{color}-{shade}: Sets the border color.

Example:

Tailwind Classes For Responsive Design

Tailwind makes it easy to create responsive designs by providing responsive variants for most of its utility classes. These variants allow you to specify different styles for different screen sizes.

Tailwind uses a mobile-first approach, where the base styles are applied to all screen sizes, and then larger screen sizes are targeted using responsive prefixes:

sm: Applies styles to small screens and up (640px and up).
md: Applies styles to medium screens and up (768px and up).
lg: Applies styles to large screens and up (1024px and up).
xl: Applies styles to extra-large screens and up (1280px and up).
2xl: Applies styles to extra-extra-large screens and up (1536px and up).

To use these responsive variants, simply prefix the utility class with the desired screen size:

In this example, the div will have a blue background on small screens, a green background on medium screens, and a red background on large screens.

You can also use responsive variants to control the layout of your elements:


  Column 1
  Column 2
  Column 3

Here, the columns will stack vertically on small screens, display in two columns on medium screens, and three columns on large screens.

Customizing The Default Classes Of Tailwind CSS

One of the strengths of Tailwind CSS is its customization options. You can easily customize the default configuration to match your project’s design requirements. The tailwind.config.js file allows you to extend or override the default settings.

Here are a few common customization options. You can totally customize every part of Tailwind, so this isn’t an exhaustive list by any means.

Colors

Tailwind CSS provides a rich color palette out of the box, but you can easily customize it to match your project’s branding or design requirements. The tailwind.config.js file allows you to extend or override the default color palette. To add custom colors, you can use the extend property within the colors object:

// tailwind.config.js
module.exports = {
  theme: {
    extend: {
      colors: {
        'brand-primary': '#ff5a5f',
        'brand-secondary': '#484848',
        'brand-accent': '#ffcc00',
      },
    },
  },
}

In this example, we’ve added three custom colors: brand-primary, brand-secondary, and brand-accent.

These colors can now be used with utility classes like bg-brand-primary, text-brand-secondary, border-brand-accent, etc. You can also modify existing color shades or add new shades to the default color palette like so:

// tailwind.config.js
module.exports = {
  theme: {
    extend: {
      colors: {
        blue: {
          '100': '#e6f0ff',
          '200': '#c3d9ff',
          '300': '#a1c2ff',
          '400': '#7eabff',
          … and so on …
        },
      },
    },
  },
}

Font Family

Tailwind CSS uses a default font family stack, but similar to colors, you can change these defaults to match your project’s typography style.

In the tailwind.config.js file, you can extend or replace the default font family. To add custom font families, use the extend property within the fontFamily object:

// tailwind.config.js
module.exports = {
  theme: {
    extend: {
      fontFamily: {
        sans: ['Poppins', 'sans-serif'],
        serif: ['Merriweather', 'serif'],
        mono: ['Fira Code', 'monospace'],
      },
    },
  },
}

You can also completely replace the default font family by omitting the extend property:

// tailwind.config.js
module.exports = {
  theme: {
    fontFamily: {
      'body': ['Open Sans', 'sans-serif'],
      'heading': ['Montserrat', 'sans-serif'],
    },
  },
}

Responsive Breakpoints

Tailwind CSS provides a responsive design system out of the box, but you can further customize it to match your project’s specific breakpoints and responsive requirements.

By modifying the screens object in the tailwind.config.js file, you can define custom breakpoints and apply different styles based on screen sizes.

For example, let’s say you have a unique breakpoint at 1440px where you want to apply specific styles:

// tailwind.config.js
module.exports = {
  theme: {
    screens: {
      'xs': '480px',
      'sm': '640px',
      'md': '768px',
      'lg': '1024px',
      'xl': '1440px',
    },
  },
}

With this custom breakpoint defined, you can use responsive utility classes like xl:text-lg, xl:flex, xl:w-1/2, etc., to apply styles specifically for screens wider than 1440px.

Spacing

Tailwind CSS provides a comprehensive set of spacing values for margins, paddings, and other spacing-related utilities. You can customize these values to match your project’s layout requirements. To add custom spacing values, use the extend property within the spacing object:

// tailwind.config.js
module.exports = {
  theme: {
    extend: {
      spacing: {
        '13': '3.25rem',
        '15': '3.75rem',
        '128': '32rem',
        '144': '36rem',
      },
    },
  },
}

Integrating Third-Party Libraries

Tailwind CSS integrates with popular front-end libraries and frameworks like React, Vue, and Angular. When working with these libraries, you can leverage Tailwind’s utility classes to style your components to create consistent and maintainable user interfaces. For example, in a React component, you can apply Tailwind utility classes directly to the JSX elements:

import React from 'react';

const Card = () => {
  return (
    
      Card Title
      Card content goes here...
    
  );
};

export default Card;

This multi-framework approach makes it really easy to bring together the best of all worlds, helping you create a beautiful app with almost no effort.

Building A Simple Application In Tailwind CSS

Let’s say you’re building a simple landing page for a fictional online course platform called LearnHub using Tailwind to style the entire page.

Step 1: Setting Up The HTML Structure

First, let’s create the basic HTML structure for our landing page:




  
  
  
  LearnHub - Online Course Platform

In this step, we’ve set up the basic structure of our HTML document. We have the section where we include the necessary meta tags and link to our CSS file (output.css). Inside the , we have the

, and

sections where we’ll add our content.

Step 2: Creating The Navigation Menu

Now, let’s add a simple navigation menu to the

section using Tailwind CSS utility classes:


  
    LearnHub
    
      Courses
      Pricing
      About

Here’s what each class does:

bg-blue-600: Sets the background color of the header to a shade of blue.
text-white: Sets the text color to white.
py-4: Adds padding to the top and bottom of the header.
container mx-auto: Centers the navigation menu horizontally.
flex justify-between items-center: Uses flexbox to space out the logo and menu items evenly and align them vertically.
text-2xl font-bold: Makes the logo text larger and bold.
flex space-x-4: Adds spacing between the menu items using flexbox.
hover:text-blue-200: Changes the text color to a lighter shade of blue when hovering over the menu items.

Step 3: Adding The Main Content

Let’s add some content to the

section of our landing page:


  
    Welcome to LearnHub
    Discover a world of knowledge with our online courses.
    Start Learning
  

  
    Featured Courses

Here’s what each class does:

container mx-auto: Centers the main content horizontally.
mt-8: Adds margin to the top of the main content.
bg-gray-100 rounded-lg p-6: Adds a light gray background, rounds the corners, and adds padding to the welcome section.
text-3xl font-bold mb-4: Makes the heading text larger, bold, and adds margin at the bottom.
text-gray-700 mb-6: Sets the text color to a darker gray and adds a margin at the bottom for the paragraph.
bg-blue-600 text-white px-4 py-2 rounded hover:bg-blue-700: Styles the Start Learning button with a blue background, white text, padding, rounded corners, and a darker blue background on hover.
text-2xl font-bold mb-4: Makes the Featured Courses heading larger, bold, and adds margin at the bottom.
grid grid-cols-1 sm:grid-cols-2 lg:grid-cols-3 gap-4: Creates a responsive grid layout for the course cards. It shows one column on small screens, two columns on medium screens, and three columns on large screens, with a gap between the cards.

Putting the header and main code together you should have the following output:

Step 4: Adding The Footer

Finally, let’s add a simple footer to our landing page:


  
    © 2023 LearnHub. All rights reserved.

Here’s what each class does:

bg-gray-800 text-white: Sets the background color of the footer to a dark gray and the text color to white.
py-4: Adds padding to the top and bottom of the footer.
mt-8: Adds margin to the top of the footer.
container mx-auto: Centers the footer content horizontally.
text-center: Centers the text within the footer.

Putting It All Together

Here’s the final code put together:



 
   
   
   
   LearnHub - Online Course Platform
 
 
   
     
       LearnHub
       
         Courses
         Pricing
         About
       
     
   

   
     
       Welcome to LearnHub
       Discover a world of knowledge with our online courses.
       Start Learning
     

     
       Featured Courses
       
         
       
     
   

   
     
       © 2023 LearnHub. All rights reserved.

To display the output to users, you’ll need to have Tailwind CSS properly set up in your project. Make sure you have followed the installation steps mentioned earlier, including creating the tailwind.config.js file and processing your CSS with Tailwind.

Once you have Tailwind CSS set up, you can save this code in an HTML file (e.g., index.html) and open it in a web browser. The browser will render the landing page with the styles applied using Tailwind CSS utility classes. If you simply want to test Tailwind, you can always use Tailwind Play, a nifty little tool by Tailwind where you can play with the different classes.

And there you have it! We’ve created a simple landing page for our fictional online course platform using Tailwind CSS utility classes.

Where To Go From Here?

Now that you’ve seen the power and flexibility of Tailwind CSS, you know the possibilities are endless here. Its flexible and customizable nature can help you build anything from simple landing pages to complex web applications while maintaining a clean and consistent design.

Here are some ideas to get you started:

Build a portfolio website: Show your skills and projects with a stunning portfolio.
Create a blog: Share your thoughts and ideas with the world using a beautiful and functional blog designed with Tailwind.
Develop a web application: Tailwind CSS is perfect for building user interfaces for web applications of all kinds.

No matter what you build, Tailwind CSS can help you create a stunning and well-functioning website.

And when it comes to hosting your creation, consider a reliable and scalable solution like DreamHost’s VPS services to ensure your website runs smoothly and efficiently.

Start building beautiful user interfaces with minimal CSS know-how!

Create a Website for All

We make sure your website is fast and secure so you can focus on the important stuff.

Choose Your Plan

The post Your Complete Tailwind CSS Primer appeared first on Website Guides, Tips & Knowledge.

How To Supercharge Site Speed With GTmetrix

Ian Hernandez — Thu, 05 Oct 2023 14:00:03 +0000

We all know how frustrating it can be to get stuck on a slow-loading site.

Whether you’re looking for product information, making an online appointment, or trying to chat with customer service, the last thing you need is to stare at a blank screen when you have things to do.

Plus, in a fast-paced world with so many competitive options, people just aren’t willing to wait. Unbounce asked mobile users how long they would wait for a web page to load. 32.3% of people said they’d give it four to six seconds, but 26.9% were ready to bail in the first three seconds.

The bottom line?

Site load speed matters.

So how can you ensure that your website is optimized for speed?

That’s where GTmetrix comes in.

What Is GTmetrix?

GTmetrix is a popular online website speed test tool. It analyzes a website’s performance and provides actionable insights you can use to optimize the site’s performance. It gives detailed information about how your site loads, which you can turn into recommendations for improvements.

DreamHost Glossary

Website Performance

A website’s performance refers to the speed and uptime of the site. A better-performing site will have faster load times, run more smoothly, and have little to no downtime.

When you analyze your site with GTmetrix, it provides you with a set of scores based on Google’s Lighthouse (formerly Pagespeed Insights) and Web Vitals metrics that can help you more deeply understand where your site stands in terms of performance.

Don’t worry.

We’ll do a deep dive into each of these scores (and everything else GTmetrix tells you) further down. By using GTmetrix, you can pinpoint bottlenecks in your site’s loading process and prioritize fixes that will lead to faster load times and a better overall user experience.

Why Use GTmetrix?

GTmetrix is a popular (and free!) tool that can help you understand and improve your website’s speed and performance. That’s important for a number of reasons:

It improves the user experience. A fast-loading website makes your users happier, full stop. Users tend to be impatient, and if a site takes too long to load, they’re more likely to abandon it. Faster sites ensure they can quickly access the information or services they’re looking for, leading to more satisfied visitors.
It boosts your Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Site speed is a known ranking factor for search engines like Google. Faster sites are more likely to rank higher in search results, which lends your site more visibility and increased traffic. Google’s emphasis on mobile-first indexing and Web Vitals (like Largest Contentful Paint, First Input Delay, and Cumulative Layout Shift) underscores the importance of factors like site speed and user experience in SEO.
It can increase your conversion rates. A slow-loading site can tank conversions. If a potential customer has to wait for a product page or checkout process to load, they might abandon their cart or the transaction. Faster sites translate to more sales and higher revenue.
It will help you reach mobile users. More and more of the internet is being accessed by users on mobile devices, so it’s absolutely crucial to optimize your site for mobile. Mobile networks can be slower than wired connections, which makes optimizing your site for speed all the more vital.
It can make your site more sustainable. Optimizing your site helps it use resources more efficiently, reducing the load on web servers. That can reduce your hosting costs – and also the environmental impact of your site.

With all these benefits in mind, let’s move on to the tutorial — read on to learn how to analyze your site with GTmetrix.

How Do You Use GTmetrix?

Using GTmetrix to analyze your site’s performance is actually very straightforward. Here’s a step-by-step guide to help you get started.

Step 1: Go To The GTmetrix Website

Visit https://gtmetrix.com/.

The entire tool is web-based, so you won’t need to download anything to use it. There are both premium and free versions. The free version is pretty powerful, but to unlock all features, you’ll need a premium GTmetrix account. After a free trial, GTmetrix Pro plans start at $128 per year.

Step 2: Enter Your Website URL

There’s a box on the homepage where you can type in the URL of the website you want to analyze.

Step 3: Choose Your Test Location And Browser (Optional)

GTmetrix offers different analysis options for premium users, like the ability to choose from different test locations and browsers. This can be extremely useful to help you understand your website’s performance from different geographical regions, from different devices and connection speeds. With a premium account, you can use 30 test servers in six geographic regions:

Vancouver, Canada
Dallas, USA
São Paulo, Brazil
London, UK
Mumbai, India
Hong Kong, China
Sydney, Australia

You can also test with specific browsers, including Google Chrome, Firefox, and mobile browsers, or use different connections, from 56k dial-up to an unthrottled connection.

If you don’t have an account or if you’re using a free account, you can still use the tool. You’ll just be limited to the default settings. If that’s the case, you can just skip this step and go straight to analyzing your site.

Step 4: Start The Test

Click the “Test your site” button. GTmetrix will then start analyzing your site. Once it’s done, you’ll get your detailed report, and you can dive in and start analyzing the results. We’ll go over all that below.

Reading And Analyzing Your GTmetrix Report

When your report is finished, before you click into any tabs, you’ll see a page with some key figures.

On the left is your GTmetrix grade. This panel shows you three things:

An overall grade – the closer it is to an “A,” the better.
Your Performance Score, which measures how well your site performs from the user’s perspective. You can find more details about this score in the Performance Tab, which we’ll explore below.
Your Structure Score, which measures how well your site is constructed for optimal performance. You can find more details about this score (and how to improve it) in the Structure Tab, which we’ll explore below.

On the right is the Web Vitals panel, which provides the most important measurements on this page:

LCP (Largest Contentful Paint): measures the time it takes for the largest content element on your page to display in the visible part of the web browser.
TBT (Total Blocking Time): measure the amount of time that scripts block your web page’s loading process.
CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift): measures the amount of unexpected layout shift that happens while your web page is loading.

Below all of this information, there are six tabs: Summary, Performance, Structure, Waterfall, Video, and History. Below, we’ll explore how to use the information in each tab in detail.

The Summary Tab

The summary tab provides a snapshot of some of the high-level information GTmetrix learns from its analysis of your site.

At the top of the page is a speed visualization, which shows a timeline of the key events during your page’s load time.

Below that, you’ll see a list of the top issues GTmetrix has identified that are impacting your site’s performance. You can learn more about these in the Structure tab (and we’ll go over them in detail further down).

At the bottom of the summary tab is the page details section, which provides percentages and file size breakdowns of the elements of your page.

You don’t need to spend a lot of time in the summary tab – it’s mostly there for informational purposes, but it’s not where you’ll find most of the actionable information GTmetrix provides.

The Performance Tab

The performance tab is a good place to take a deep dive into your site’s load time metrics. In particular, the Performance Metrics section contains some additional load time figures that aren’t included in the summary tab:

First Contentful Paint: measures how quickly the first content elements appear on your page. For some sites, this is text – for others, it’s images.
Time to Interactive: measures how long it takes for your site to become fully interactive – i.e., how long it takes for users to be able to do things like click links and buttons after the page starts loading.
Speed Index: measures how quickly the content on the page becomes visible to the user.

Below Performance Metrics, you’ll see the Browser Timings section, which includes:

Redirect Duration: measures the time taken for all redirections (HTTP to HTTPS, domain redirects, etc.) to complete. It starts from the initial request to the last byte of the final redirect.
Connection Duration: measures the time taken to establish a connection between the user’s browser and the server, including the time taken for the TLS/SSL handshake if the site is using HTTPS.
Backend Duration: measures the time taken for the server to generate the page. It’s essentially the time from the user’s request to receiving the first byte of data.
Time to First Byte (TTFB): measures the time it takes from the user making an HTTP request to receiving the first byte of data from the server. It is a crucial metric for understanding server response times.
First Paint: measures the time it takes for the first visual element to be rendered on the screen. It marks the point where users start seeing visual changes on the page.
DOM Interactive Time: measures the time it takes for the HTML Document Object Model (DOM) of the page to be fully constructed and interactive, but without waiting for stylesheets, images, and subframes to finish loading.
DOM Content Loaded Time: measures the time it takes for the DOM to be interactive and for all the scripts to be loaded. Essentially, it marks the point where you could expect the page to be functionally interactive.
Onload Time: measures the time it takes for the page and all its assets, including images, CSS, and JavaScript, to be fully loaded and the “onload” event to be triggered.
Fully Loaded Time: measures the time it takes for not only the page to be fully loaded but also for all additional network activity to stop. This is often slightly longer than the Onload Time as it includes the loading of assets that JavaScript might trigger after the Onload event.

Similar to the summary tab, this is a great place to find more information about your site, but it’s still not where you’ll find actionable recommendations for improving its speed and performance – those come in the next tab, structure. Let’s dive in.

The Structure Tab

The structure tab is where the magic happens. This is where GTmetrix provides audits based on Google-established best practices for building websites with optimized front-end performance. In this tab, you’ll see a list of all the top issues GTmetrix has identified for your site in order of priority. This means you will see the issues most likely to have the greatest impact on your site’s speed and performance first, at the top of the page.

More than that, GTmetrix will tell you exactly how to solve each issue— Click on the issue to expand it to see a more detailed explanation, and on the upper right, you’ll see a button that reads, “Learn how to improve this.” Clicking it will take you to a GTmetrix tutorial that walks you through the specific fix for whatever issue is holding your site back.

There are nearly infinite issues that can keep your site from reaching optimal speed and performance, but GTmetrix helps you discover and learn how to fix them in just a few clicks. Depending on how many issues your site has, this is where you’ll want to spend the bulk of your time using GTmetrix. Once you’ve solved as many issues as possible, you can explore the rest of the tabs in your analysis.

The Waterfall Tab

The waterfall tab features a waterfall chart – a graph that shows, in detail, how your website loads. It should show every element, including scripts, media files, requested third-party resources, and their request details, durations, and execution times. The bar lengths indicate how long each element took to request, download, and execute.

The waterfall tab might look overwhelming at first, but it’s a good way to debug performance and page issues, since it can help you visually break your page down, section by section, allowing you to quickly spot bottlenecks or problematic areas.

By showing how different factors or components contribute to an end result, waterfall charts can guide decisions on where to allocate resources, what to prioritize, or where interventions might have the most impact.

The Video Tab

On the video tab, you can watch a video of your page loading to see stoppages and bottlenecks. You can slow the video playback down to better visualize loading behavior and jump to major milestones during your page load. However, you should note that videos are only available if you have a GTmetrix account.

The History Tab

Finally, there’s the history tab. Here, you can view your past reports (if you have an account and are signed in). You can also use History Graphs to compare your site’s functionality with past analyses and track its performance over time.

How To Speed Up Your WordPress Site

The the whole point of using GTmetrix is to get actionable recommendations for optimizing your site that are tailored to what’s actually slowing it down – so definitely start there. Of course, there are still some great best practices everyone can use to make sure their site moves at lightning speed. Try these recommendations if your WordPress site could use a boost:

Choose a good host. Your web hosting provider is vital to your site’s performance. Opt for a reputable hosting provider that offers resources tailored to your site’s needs, like DreamPress managed WordPress hosting.
Use a Content Delivery Network (CDN). CDNs can distribute your website’s static content across servers located worldwide, allowing visitors to load the site from a server closer to their location.
Optimize images. Large image files can slow down your site. Use tools or plugins like Smush, ShortPixel, or EWWW Image Optimizer to compress and resize images without compromising on quality.
Minify and combine files. Minify your CSS, JavaScript, and HTML files to reduce their size. Plugins like WP Rocket, Autoptimize, or W3 Total Cache can help with this.
Use caching. Implement caching to store copies of frequently accessed data, reducing the need to regenerate that data. Popular plugins for this include WP Super Cache, W3 Total Cache, and WP Rocket.
Limit your plugins. Every plugin adds some overhead to your site. Only install necessary plugins, and periodically review and deactivate or delete any that are no longer needed.
Optimize your database. Regularly clean your WordPress database to get rid of unnecessary data, like post revisions, trashed items, and transient options.
Reduce redirects. Having many redirects increases page load time, especially for mobile users. Ensure that you limit the number of redirects on your site.
Use the latest PHP version. WordPress runs on PHP. Ensure your server uses a recent version of PHP for improved performance and security.
Keep WordPress updated! Regularly update the WordPress core, themes, and plugins to ensure you have the latest speed optimization improvements and security patches.

GTmetrix Frequently Asked Questions

What Is The Difference Between PageSpeed, YSlow, and Web Vitals in GTmetrix?

Google PageSpeed and YSlow: These are sets of web performance rules and best practices created by Google and Yahoo!, respectively. GTmetrix tests your site against these rules and gives scores based on compliance.
Web Vitals: Introduced by Google, these are a set of metrics related to speed, responsiveness, and visual stability, aiming to help site owners measure the user experience on the web. Key metrics include Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), First Input Delay (FID), and Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS).

Why Do I Get Different Results When I Test My Site Multiple Times?

A lot of factors can cause variations in test results, including fluctuations in server performance, network congestion, third-party resources, and even GTmetrix’s own server loads. If you’re getting different results from different tests, try running multiple tests and take an average for more accurate insights.

Does Pagespeed Matter To Google?

Yes, PageSpeed does matter to Google. Site speed has been a ranking factor for desktop searches since 2010 and for mobile searches since 2018.

Is GTmetrix Reliable?

Yes, the GTmetrix speed tester is a reliable tool for analyzing website performance. It utilizes well-established metrics and best practices from Google’s Lighthouse and other trusted sources to assess a site’s speed and optimization. Still, like all tools, it’s a good idea to use GTmetrix alongside other performance testing tools to get a comprehensive view of your site’s performance.

How Does GTmetrix Compare To Other Performance Measurement Tools, Like Pingdom?

GTmetrix and Pingdom are both popular and reliable tools for measuring website performance. While both offer insights into page load times, request counts, and page sizes, there are some differences:

Metrics and recommendations: GTmetrix bases its recommendations on Google’s Lighthouse and YSlow, while Pingdom has its own set of performance insights.
Testing locations: Both tools allow testing from different geographic locations, but the available locations might vary.
Features: GTmetrix offers video playback of the loading process for some plans, while Pingdom provides uptime monitoring and more extensive website monitoring services.

Is GTmetrix Free?

GTmetrix offers a free version that allows users to test and analyze their websites. However, for more advanced features, such as multiple test locations, priority access, or more frequent monitoring, they offer premium plans.

What Is A Good GTmetrix Grade?

GTmetrix grades websites based on their adherence to performance best practices. It’s just like in school – an A grade is considered excellent. Still, sites with Bs or even Cs can provide a good user experience. Instead of just focusing on the grade, it’s more important to address the specific recommendations provided by GTmetrix that can improve user experience.

Is A Higher GTmetrix Score Always Better?

While a higher score generally indicates better optimization, it’s essential to focus on the real-world impact. Sometimes, a perfect score isn’t necessary if the user experience is already excellent. Always prioritize actual site performance and user experience over chasing a perfect score.

What Do I Do If I Get A Bad GTmetrix Grade?

GTmetrix provides actionable recommendations based on the results. Common suggestions include optimizing images, leveraging browser caching, minimizing redirects, and reducing server response times. Still, the recommendations you receive will depend on your site and what would be most impactful to optimize it based on its needs.

How Long Should My Site Take To Load?

While it’s ideal for a site to load as quickly as possible, a common benchmark is aiming for a load time of 2-3 seconds or less. Google’s research indicates that as page load time goes from 1s to 3s, the probability of bounce (a user leaving the site) increases by 32%. However, the “acceptable” load time can vary based on the industry, the type of content on the site, and user expectations. It’s always good practice to benchmark against competitors and continuously work on improving load times to provide the best user experience.

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The post How To Supercharge Site Speed With GTmetrix appeared first on Website Guides, Tips & Knowledge.

Git Commands: 21 Must-Know Options

Ian Hernandez — Tue, 03 Oct 2023 14:00:45 +0000

Anyone who uses Git, or has even seen it for that matter, knows there are a lot of terms and modifiers to keep up with.

And keep up, you must, as it’s become the standard in version control for tech products today.

But instead of just expecting you to keep it all in your head, we put together this go-to resource full of critical commands for you to reference so you can use Git both effectively and efficiently.

Not a Git super user (yet)? That’s perfectly fine.

The commands we’ll detail here range from the everyday to the more rare and complex. And, as an added bonus, each is joined by tips on ways you can use it during a development project.

We’ll kick things off with some info on Git’s background, then wrap up with a full walkthrough of how you might use Git in a real-life setting.

Quick Debrief: Understanding Git, GitHub, & Version Control

Git is what its builders call a Source Code Management (SCM) platform. In other words, it’s a version control system. One that’s free, easy to use, and thus at the core of many well-known projects.

Which brings us to a logical question if you aren’t immersed in the world of development: What exactly is version control?

Building something from code frequently takes a lot of trial, error, and steps. And, in many cases, collaboration.

It’s easy for important elements that took a lot of effort to get overwritten or lost. For example, if you’ve ever worked with a colleague in a live Google Doc, you understand what we mean.

A version control tool basically saves each iteration of your progress throughout a project. This is helpful in case you want to rewind to a previous version to review and grab certain elements to reuse — or even restore an older version if something in the current build isn’t working as intended.

Git is installed locally, meaning it exists on your computer instead of in the cloud. In fact, you don’t even have to be connected to the internet when using it!

In this way, it provides a secure repository (often called a “repo,” which is a storage space for code) for a developer to save every “draft” of a project they’re working on.

Git takes this one step further with the branching model for which it has become known.

With Git, a developer can create various code “branches” that extend from a project. These branches are basically copies of the main project, which used to be called the “master” project, but that term is being phased out.

Changes in branches don’t impact the code of the main project unless you tell them to. With branching, developers can do things like experiment with new features or fix bugs. The changes made in a branch won’t impact the main code unless you do something called “merging.”

Git makes perfect sense for website owners or developers working on their own projects. But what about when you need to work with a team on a coding project?

Meet GitHub.

GitHub is a development platform for hosting Git repositories.

In other words, it’s how you get your Git repos off of your local machine and onto the internet, usually for the purpose of enabling people to collaborate on them.

GitHub is cloud based and for profit, though the basics can be used for free when you sign up.

The primary function of GibHub is enabling developers to work together on a singular project in real time, remotely making code revisions, reviewing each other’s work, and updating the main project.

GitHub maintains the core feature of Git: preventing overwriting and maintaining each saved version of a project. It also layers in all kinds of additional features and add-ons like increased storage, fast development environments, AI-powered code writing, code auditing support, and much more. (We recommend checking out the pricing page to see everything on offer.)

It’s important to note that GitHub isn’t the only service in this space. Alternatives include Bitbucket, GitLab, etc.

However, Git and GitHub of course work together like peanut butter and jelly, as you’ll see a little later in this article.

First things first: a complete list of all the Git commands developers and tech teams should be familiar with to find success in this version control environment.

DreamHost Glossary

Github

GitHub is a cloud-based service developers use to store their code, track new changes, and collaborate with other developers. It is a popular platform for collaborating in real-time on software projects.

21 Of The Most-Used Git Commands You Should Know

Are you ready for the ultimate Git cheat sheet?

In this section we’ll dive into the Git commands, instructions, basically, that you need to know to use Git successfully. And, we’ll even throw on some tips on how you may use each of them in a project.

Pro tip for making the most of this document: Press “command + F” on a Mac or “Ctrl + F” on Windows to open a search box to find a specific command, if you’re looking for something in particular.

`git config`

git config is a helpful command for customizing how Git works on three levels: the operating system level (system), user-specific level (global), and repository-specific level (local).

Try out git config with these moves:

git config --global user.email [your email]
This is a command many devs run right after downloading Git to set up their email address.

git config --global user.name [your name]
For setting up your user name.

git config --local
Customize your local repository-specific settings. This will override default Git configs at the system and global levels.

`git pull`

git pull is your command for fetching code from a remote repo and downloading it to your local repo, which will then be updated to match what you just pulled.

This act of merging is foundational to using Git. And, it’s actually “shorthand” for two other commands: git fetch then git merge.

Here are a few ways this command is commonly used:

git pull [remote]
Fetch a specific remote repo and merge it with the local you’re working on.

git pull --no-commit [remote]
This command still fetches the remote repo, but does not automatically merge it.

Since pull is such a core Git command, there are tons of ways to use it. This guide to Git Branch Commands offers even more examples and some fresh combos you can try.

`git fetch`

git fetch as a standalone command downloads commits from remote repos into local repos. It gives you the chance to see and modify code from other devs.

Let’s try out this command:

git fetch origin
Downloads a copy of the origin remote repository and saves it locally. Nothing is changed or merged, unlike what git pull does by default.

git fetch --all
Grab data from all remote repos (origin included).

git fetch --shallow-exclude=[revision]
Excludes commits from a specific branch or tag.

DreamHost Glossary

Tag

A WordPress tag is a default taxonomy that enables you to categorize your posts. Readers can then click on a post’s tag to view similar articles with the same tag.

`git merge`

The git merge command combines branches (most often two, but can be more) to create a singular history. Git will highlight conflicts that arise in the merge to be fixed.

Options for this command include:

git merge [branch name]
Use this to merge changes from the named branch into the branch you’re using.

git merge --abort
Stop the merge and restore the project to its pre-merge state. This command perfectly illustrates how Git helps maintain older code versions to protect project progress.

`git add`

git add is the command to use when you’re ready to “save” a copy of your work. It’s very often used in conjunction with the next command — git commit — as this adds (aka “commits”) what’s been saved to the project’s running history.

Here are some ways you can specify what to save (or “stage”) with this command:

git add [file]
This tees up all the changes you’ve made to a specific file so it can be included in the next commit.

git add [directory]
Similar to above, this cues changes to a specific directory so it’s ready for the commit.

`git commit`

git commit is the second command in the trifecta of making and tracking a change in Git.

This command basically says to store any changes that were made with the git add command. Not to make the changes to the main code, just to hold them safely.

Some options for using this command include:

git commit --amend
Modifies the last commit instead of creating a whole new one.

git commit -m [your message here]
Annotate your commit with a message, which goes inside the brackets.

`git push`

git push completes the collaboration cycle in Git. It sends any committed changes from local to remote repositories. From here, other developers on the project can start working with the updates. It’s the opposite of the fetch command.

Here’s how to use it:

git push [remote] [branch]
Push a specified branch, its commits, and any attached objects. Creates a new local branch in target remote repo.

git push [remote] --all
Push all local branches to a specific remote repo.

`git branch`

Create, edit, and remove branches in git with the git branch command.

Use the branch command in these ways:

git branch [branch]
This creates a new branch, which you can name by replacing the word in brackets.

git branch -c
This command copies a Git branch.

git push [remote repo] --delete [ branch name]
Delete a remote Git branch, named in the last set of brackets.

`git checkout`

Use the git checkout command to navigate among the branches inside the repo you’re working in.

git checkout [branch name]
Switch to a different Git branch, named within the brackets.

git checkout -b [new-branch]
Simultaneously create a new branch and navigate to it. This shortcut combines git branch and git checkout [new branch].

`git remote`

With the git remote command you can see, create, and delete remote connections, “bookmarks” in a way, to other repos. This can help you reference repos in your code without having to go find them and use their full, sometimes inconvenient names.

Try these remote commands:

git remote add [alias] [URL]
Add a remote repository by specifying its link and giving it an alias.

git remote -v
Get a list of remote connections, and include the URLs of each.

`git revert`

git revert undoes changes by creating a new commit that inverses the changes, as specified.

One way to (carefully!) use git revert is:

git revert [commit ID]
This will only revert changes associated with the specific commit that’s been identified.

`git reset`

git reset is a more risky and potentially permanent command for undoing commits.

This command should only be used in local or private repos to prevent the chances of interrupting anyone who’s coding in a remote, public repo. Since it can “orphan” commits that may then get deleted in Git’s routine maintenance, there’s a real chance this command can erase someone’s hard work.

This is a complex command that should be used with discretion, so before trying it for the first time we strongly recommend reading this Git Reset guide from Bitbucket.

`git status`

git status provides insights into your working directory (this is where every stored historical version lives) and staging area (kind of like the “under construction” area between the directory and repository). With this command you can see where your files stand.

There’s one primary way to use this command:

git status
See a list of staged, unstaged, and untracked files.

`git clone`

Use git clone to create a copy of an existing repository. This is useful for creating a duplicate of a repo in which you can play around without damaging anything that’s live to the public.

Here are some options for using this command:

git clone [repository URL] --branch [branch name]
Clone the linked repository, then jump right to a specific branch within it.

git clone [repo] [directory]
Clone a specific repository into a specific directory folder on your local machine.

`git init`

Use the git init command to create a new Git repository as a .git subdirectory in your current working directory. It’s different from git clone as it can create a new repository instead of only copying an existing one.

The most common applications of this command include:

git init
Where it all starts, this transforms your current directory into a Git repository.

git init [directory]
With this, you can turn a specific directory into a Git repository.

git init --bare
This generates a new bare repository, from which commits can’t be made. This creates a helpful staging ground for collaboration.

`git rebase`

git rebase has history rewriting powers that help keep your commits neat and clean.

It’s an option when you need to integrate updates into the main branch with a fast-forward merge that shows a linear history.

git rebase [target branch name]
Rebase your checked out branch onto a specific target branch.

git rebase [target branch name] -i
Initiate an interactive rebase from your checked out branch onto a different target branch.

This is another complex command that shouldn’t be used in a public repo as it may remove important elements of the project history. To learn more about how both the standard and interactive versions of this command work, we again recommend Bitbucket and their git rebase guide.

`git diff`

“Diffing” is the practice of displaying the variations between two data sets.

The git diff command shows variances between Git data sources such as comments, files, etc.

Options for using this command include:

git diff --staged
Shows the difference between what’s staged but isn’t yet committed.

git diff [commit ID 1] [commit ID 2]
This command compares changes between two different commits.

`git tag`

The git tag command points at a time in Git history, usually a version release. Tags don’t change like branches do.

git tag [tag name]
Use this to name a tag and capture the state of the repo at the time.

git tag -d [tag name]
Want to remove that tag? Run this command.

`git rm`

The git rm command removes files from both staging and the working directory.

Here are a few ways to try out git rm:

git rm [file]
This is the basic code to get a file ready for deletion in the next commit.

git rm --cached
This removes a file from the staging area, but keeps it in the working directory so you still have a local copy in case you need it.

`git log`

git log provides a, well, log of all the commits in the history of a repository.

Ready to try it out? Here we go:

git log [SHA]
A Secure Hash Algorithm (SHA) is a unique identifier for each commit. Use this command to display a certain commit as well as every other commit made previously.

git log --stat
The command displays which files were changed with each commit, number of lines added/removed, and number of files and lines edited.

`git show`

This git show command line provides details on different Git objects like trees, tags, and commits.

Here are a few ways to exercise this command:

git show [SHA]
The simplest of git show commands, Use the SHA that we just learned about above to show the details of any object.

git show [SHA]:path/to/file
This will show a specific version of a file you’re seeking when you include its SHA.

Still learning how to use Git, have any questions about the above commands, or just itching to dive into even more variations that you can use to manipulate your code in thousands of ways?

We have to shout out the Git tutorials from Bitbucket as a great, deep, and interconnected resource that can take you most places you want to go with Git.

And go you should. After all, open-source, and the Git tech that powers most of it, is the future of business.

Commands In Real Life: How To Develop On WordPress Using Git + GitHub

We just threw a ton of possibly new terms and tricks at you.

If you aren’t deep into Git, it can be hard to see how these can all come together to work in a real-life scenario.

So we’ll top things off with a walkthrough of how to use Git and GitHub to set yourself up to develop on a WordPress website.

1. Install WordPress.org

First up, the WordPress part.

You’re going to install a WordPress.org instance (learn the difference between WordPress.com & WordPress.org if you’re not familiar) and create a local staging environment on your computer.

If you don’t already have a great process for this, we like Local’s WP-specific dev tool.

2. Install Git

And just like that, it’s time for the Git part.

Install Git if you haven’t already. Find the latest version on the Git website.

Many Mac and Linux machines already have Git installed. Check yours by opening your command line interface (like Terminal on Mac or Git Bash on Windows) and entering the first command of this tutorial:

git --version

If Git is there, you’ll get a version number back. If not, this Git installation guide will get you on your way.

3. Create A Local Repo With Git

Now, we’ll create your local Git repo.

Access your WordPress theme’s folder (this example includes Twenty Twenty-One) using this command:

cd/Users/[you]/Documents/Websites/[website]/wp-content/themes/twentytwentyone

Replace [you] and [website] with your own folder names. Then, initialize this directory as a repository with this command:

git init

To add every file in the folder to the index, type in:

git add

Commit your changes with a notation that will keep your history organized with this command:

git commit -m “first commit"

Your local repo is configured!

4. Create A Remote Repo With GitHub

At this point, you want to create a GitHub account if you don’t already have one.

Once created and signed in, you can create a remote repository from your GitHub dashboard.

When you’re finished following the steps to set up your new project, it’s time to get your WordPress theme into your new remote repo in GitHub.

5. Add WordPress Project To GitHub (Learning To Push)

Use these commands in Git to push your WordPress theme into GitHub:

git remote add origin [repo URL]

git push -u origin master

Replace the URL in brackets with a link to the repository you just set up in GitHub.

Next, you’ll be asked to enter your GitHub username and password.

Once those are in, files committed to your local repo thus far will be pushed to your GitHub repo.

6. Optional: Fetch (AKA Pull) Updates

Now that you’ve pushed changes from your local repo to the remote repo on GitHub, the last thing to learn is how to pull changes so you can do the reverse — add updates from the remote repo to your local one.

Of course, if you’re working independently on a coding project, you won’t need to do this step. However, it’s helpful to know as it immediately becomes necessary once you’re collaborating with a team who are all making and pushing updates.

So, we’re going to pull updates into local using the fetch command:

git fetch [URL]

Don’t forget to replace [URL] with the link to the repository from which you’re pulling.

With that, changes are pulled from GitHub and copied to your local, so both repos are the same. You’re synced and ready to work on the latest version of the project!

Still need a hand with Git?

For a much more detailed walkthrough of the above process, check out our full guide on How to Use GitHub for WordPress Development.

Or, better yet, engage our development experts at DreamHost.

Let us handle one-off website tweaks to full-on website management, so your team can get back to the development and management work that moves your business forward.

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The post Git Commands: 21 Must-Know Options appeared first on Website Guides, Tips & Knowledge.

Learn to Code With These (Mostly Free) Resources

Ian Hernandez — Tue, 01 Aug 2023 14:00:00 +0000

Have you guys heard about this thing called “the Internet”?

Seriously, I know we’re all just trying to survive the generative AI era and still have jobs (any job?) a decade from now.

And there’s one thing that can’t hurt: Learning to code.

Even with the rise of AI, coders and programmers are in demand around the world.

Plus, programming is more than just a way to build things — Coding helps you learn to solve problems, aids people in need, and, as Steve Jobs admonished, teaches you how to think.

The good news is you don’t have to live in Silicon Valley or have expensive, high-tech gadgets to learn how to code. Self-taught programming has been on the rise, and you can join the masses taking to the web to learn the next universal language.

With the click of a mouse, you can develop a whole new repertoire of programming skills, and we’ve got all the resources you need to help you learn to code and build your next website or app.

Here is a hefty list of 58 free online courses, open-source resources, and low-cost tools to get started.

Table of Contents

Learn HTML

Learn CSS

Learn JavaScript

Learn React

Learn PHP

Learn SQL

Learn Python

Coding Challenges, Games, And Assessments

Books To Learn To Code

Coding Mentors And Meetups

Bonus: Coding Podcasts

Bonus #2: Coding For Kids

Calling All Self-Taught Tinkerers

Learn HTML

Let’s start with the front end.

Although HTML isn’t necessarily “coding,” it’s the fundamental building block of most of the web pages in the world.

If you’re just dipping your toes into understanding programming, HTML is a great place to start.

Let’s look at the best resources to learn HTML.

#1: Programming With Mosh (YouTube)

Dive into the Programming with Mosh channel, and you’ll find bite-sized coding classes on almost any topic you can imagine. From C++ to Java, Mosh offers a huge collection of videos on almost every language, syntax, and topic. Most videos are just 60 minutes, and they’ll teach you the ABCs of the topic and how to create neat, tidy code.

Unsurprisingly, this HTML for Beginners video will have you writing functional HTML in about an hour.

#2: Learn HTML From Codecademy

Codecademy’s Learn HTML course traverses a spectrum of topics, including elements, structure, tables, forms, and the much-discussed semantic HTML.

After signing up, you get a tour of enlightening textual explanations plus the chance to roll up your sleeves and get your hands dirty with real coding exercises.

Best of all: It’s 100% free.

#3: Learn-HTML.org

Don’t overlook learn-html.org, which houses a treasure trove of HTML tutorials.

The journey begins with the basics like elements, selectors, and classes and then propels you to format links, lists, and images in HTML. Each lesson includes code samples and exercises to help you master the art of writing compliant markup.

Learn CSS

DreamHost Glossary

CSS

Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is an essential coding language used for styling web pages. CSS helps you create beautiful pages by modifying the appearance of various elements, including font style, color, layout, and more.

After you master HTML, you’ll be hungry to make things look neat and tidy. That’s where Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) comes in.

Use these resources to learn how to write optimized CSS that works in every browser, screen size, and resolution.

#4: Codevolution’s CSS Crash Course (YouTube)

In need of a CSS starter kit? Check out Codevolution’s CSS Crash Course. It’s a brief – yet comprehensive – tour around the basics of CSS. It’ll teach you how to add and customize styles in an HTML document and covers color, text, fonts, lists, tables, and more.

However, keep in mind it’s just a crash course. It’s great for beginners but doesn’t cover everything.

#5: SuperSimpleDev’s HMTL & CSS Full Course (YouTube)

Have you ever watched a 7-hour YouTube video?

If you’re looking for a much more comprehensive (and functional) guide to learning CSS, this video is a great walkthrough. It also covers HTML, so if you already know HTML (or used one of the above resources), you can skip through those sections to get to the styling parts.

#6: Learn CSS From Codecademy

Codecademy’s Learn CSS course is another great way to go.

The course takes you through the right way to format files, add cool features, and design impressive layouts. It covers everything from syntax to colors and typography. Each lesson provides a detailed explanation and hands-on practice. You can see how your code touches up the website’s look in real time.

DreamHost Glossary

Typography

Typography is a process of arranging a typeface in variations of font, size, and spacing. This involves making text’s appearance, style, and arrangement readable and visually pleasing.

#7: CSS Diner

Ever thought mastering selectors could be fun? CSS Diner is an online game turning learning into an entertaining experience. It’ll equip you with the skills to pinpoint specific elements at the start of your CSS journey.

Learn JavaScript

HTML and CSS are great, but if you really want to “write code,” learning JavaScript might be your easiest entry point.

Using JS, you’ll be able to manipulate front-end components and start to work on back-end development. That makes you a full-stack developer. (Congrats!)

#8: Learnjavascript.online

It does what it says on the tin. Learnjavacript.online is an ultra-simple (but great!) way to learn JavaScript from your browser.

It’s an interactive hub where you can read bite-sized tutorials, roll up your virtual sleeves, and experiment with actual coding in the code playground, all without leaving your browser. The magic lies in the “learn and apply” formula, allowing you to practice new skills on the fly. Enjoy the first seven chapters on the house, and if you’re really cruising, a single payment unlocks the whole training.

#9: Scrimba

Picture a coding school with no dry lectures, but a hands-on learning style. It’s all about practical coding skills, without the theory. Just remember, completing the free HTML & CSS crash course would make your journey smoother when moving onto JavaScript.

#10: Free Code Camp

The site FreeCodeCamp.com offers a repository for free courses, including many JavaScript learning tools and lessons. You can work on 40 projects after learning the basics. There’s less hand-holding than some other guided resources, but the content’s valuable.

#11: JSRobot

If you thought coding was all about cramming commands, JSRobot is here to change your mind. You won’t spend a lot of time learning before you start programming. You’ll find yourself writing efficient code faster than you anticipated. So, roll up your sleeves, let your little robot guide show you the ropes of JavaScript logic, and watch the magic happen.

#12: CodeCombat

CodeCombat breaks down the walls of traditional learning, providing an engaging, socially interactive space to learn to code. The mix of a comprehensive curriculum and a charming fantasy world makes learning feel like an adventure. And for those with a competitive streak, pit your JavaScript skills against others in the exciting CodeCombat AI League.

Learn React

ReactJS (usually called “React”) makes building reusable components, forms, and interfaces easy.

This is technically a JavaScript library, but because it’s so popular and widely used, it’s worth taking the time to learn React if you want to get serious about building apps and software.

#13: React Official Tutorials

The React official website is a goldmine of resources for all things React, from essential documentation and tutorials to a bustling community forum for collaborative problem-solving. A GitHub link to React’s source code is readily available. For beginners, the Tutorial tab hosts a fun introductory lesson that has you crafting a mini-game while teaching React fundamentals.

It’s tailor-made for hands-on learners and perfectly complements the wealth of advanced resources under the Docs tab.

#14: Learn React From Codecademy

Codecademy’s self-guided Learn React course is a ticket to the exciting world of React programming.

From creating components, props, and states to using React with JavaScript, you’ll learn it all. Completion of the course enables you to build simple React applications. You can become a React proficient in just 20 hours!

#15: Free Code Camp

Free Code Camp offers the course, Learn ReactJS – Complete Roadmap. It lays a clear path for front-end application building with React. Ideal for beginners, it can help grow your skills from intermediate to advanced React development.

#16: React JS Frontend Web Development For Beginners From Udemy

This no-cost Udemy course is set to walk you through the basics of hooks and working with external APIs. Additionally, it offers insights into making AJAX requests and the construction of a news app.

While you get access to nearly three hours of video content by default, you can spring for the paid membership to receive a completion certificate and the chance to engage in Q&A and direct messaging with the instructor.

#17: Egghead.io

Want to dive all the way into React? Meet Egghead.io.

This site provides numerous video courses tailored to your learning. The Beginner’s Guide to React is a 30-part course that lets you learn in a distraction-free setting, starting from scratch and culminating in a deployed application.

From understanding React’s problem-solving capabilities to JSX’s role and managing state with hooks, it’s a thorough, hands-on course. Plus, once you’re done, there are plenty more courses to go deeper.

Learn PHP

If you work on WordPress websites, you’ll want to learn PHP.

PHP pulls information from the database and allows you to format and display it on the front end like a pro. Cozy up with the code editor and dive in so you can debug the next plugin that goes haywire.

DreamHost Glossary

PHP

PHP (Hypertext Preprocessor) is an open-source scripting language. It’s widely used in web development and can be embedded in HTML. Several popular Content Management Systems (CMS), such as WordPress, are built with PHP.

#18: PHP For Beginners By Traversy Media (YouTube)

Traversy Media’s “PHP For Beginners” is an invaluable tutorial for anyone keen on learning PHP. Across three hours, the YouTube video takes you through the A to Z of PHP, touching upon functions, loops, and arrays.

Convenient timestamps help you focus on your areas of interest.

#19: PHP Tutorial For Beginners – Full Course By Envato Tuts+ (YouTube)

Looking to spend seven hours learning PHP instead of three? We’ve got you covered.

Seriously though, Envato Tuts+ offers a comprehensive PHP course aptly titled “PHP Tutorial for Beginners – Full Course”. Jeremy McPeak, the instructor, begins with fundamentals and progressively delves deeper into the language. The course is designed to make you adept at writing functions, manipulating variables, understanding syntax, and handling GET and POST requests.

While longer than the above option, it’s also more comprehensive.

#20: Learn PHP From Codecademy

For those seeking a structured PHP learning resource, Codecademy’s “Learn PHP” course is an excellent option.

This is a 25-hour curriculum covering variables, functions, arrays, loops, and other PHP essentials. Each module is followed by hands-on exercises that reinforce learning. The course also provides helpful aids, like hints, a cheat sheet, and module-specific community forums. Plus, you can use the built-in playground to write and test your code as you learn.

#21: PHP Apprentice

PHP Apprentice offers a unique approach to learning PHP. This online book, accessible for free, demystifies PHP practices through its well-structured chapters and coding examples. Best of all, it’s being actively maintained and updated. So there’s new content and new lessons being added all the time.

Learn SQL

SQL (pronounced “sequel” and stands for “Structured Query Language”) is one of the most common and popular languages for accessing and manipulating data in a database. In other words, learning SQL is sort of like learning the Dewey Decimal system…but for computers.

#22: SQL For Beginners Tutorial (YouTube)

A 45-minute video crash course makes learning SQL basics a breeze.

This tutorial includes a detailed walkthrough on setting up Microsoft SQL Server and SQL Server Management Studio, two free and powerful tools. Gain a good understanding of tables, primary keys, and various data types, building a strong foundation in SQL.

#23: Learn SQL From Codecademy

Codecademy offers beginner-friendly courses like Learn SQL that guide you through the core concepts of SQL and relational databases. The best part? You can progress through these modules at your own pace, making it an ideal choice for independent learning.

#24: SQL Tutorial On W3Schools

W3Schools offers an extensive SQL tutorial for those seeking a deeper understanding. It covers everything from writing properly structured SQL statements to advanced operations like database creation and alteration. Once you’ve digested the material, you can check your comprehension with hands-on exercises.

#25: Complete SQL Bootcamp (Udemy)

Udemy’s Complete SQL Bootcamp is a solid choice if you’re looking to certify your SQL skills. The course covers data analysis, table creation, database establishment, and much more, using PostgreSQL, a knowledge base that can be transferred to other SQL databases. Earning this certification could significantly boost your resume.

Learn Python

Coding isn’t all just variables and if-then statements.

Data analysis, data structures, algorithms, and machine learning are a hot topic these days. (You know, with that pesky AI thing requiring lots and lots of data.)

Learning Python will help you get your foot in the door on these topics and use cases.

#26: The Python Beginner’s Guide

For Python beginners, the official Python website is an indispensable resource. The freely accessible Beginner’s Guide serves as a roadmap to your Python journey. It links you to various learning tools like quizzes, assignments, cheat sheets, and style checkers.

#27: Introduction To Python Programming (Udemy)

There’s a concise yet comprehensive course on Udemy aimed at those new to Python.

It’s a compact program that runs just under two hours but covers essential Python concepts such as scripting and the creation of functions.

#28: Learn Python 3 From Codecademy

Ready to make it official with Python?

The Pro plan from Codecademy features an immersive Python 3 course well-suited for an introduction to scripting and fundamental programming concepts. Lessons span various topics, including Python syntax, control flow mechanisms, function building, and data structuring with lists and directories. There are no prerequisites, and after roughly 25 hours of study, learners can earn a certificate.

#29: LearnPython.org

LearnPython.org, an interactive learning platform, houses a great collection of coding tutorials. From elementary lessons on variables to advanced modules on data science, it caters to learners at all stages. It also extends a collaborative space on Facebook, connecting learners worldwide.

#30: Learning Python: From Zero To Hero (Free Code Camp)

I mean…who doesn’t want to go from zero to hero? Am I right?

Free Code Camp’s “Learning Python: From Zero to Hero” course is a text-based course that presents Python’s essentials in a clear and accessible manner. Master the art of variables, conquer conditional statements, and unleash the power of looping as you navigate through engaging sections. Explore the versatility of lists, dive into the intricacies of iterating through diverse data structures, and unlock the potential of objects and classes. By the time you complete this course, you’ll have transformed from a Python beginner to….well, a hero.

#31: One Month Python Bootcamp

Take the leap from beginner to advanced Python programming with the One Month Python Bootcamp. This comprehensive, self-paced course offers a project-based approach to deepen your understanding of Python. While it costs $299, the intensive material and hands-on projects provide the foundation you need to excel as a Python developer.

Coding Challenges, Games, And Assessments

We know gaming isn’t time-wasting — rather, it’s an engaging way to learn and practice new concepts as you learn to code.

Use these online activities to sharpen your skills:

#32: CodeAbbey

CodeAbbey is a collection of beginner-to-advanced practice problems that allow you to earn certificates and hone your skills. Consider it a type of fun homework.

#33: Coderbyte

Choose a coding language and solve challenges; accompanying solutions and tutorials help you cement crucial programming skills with step-by-step instructions.

#34: CodinGame

Play virtual coding games (think: destroying enemy ships with code) that can teach you essential skills and get you noticed by companies.

#35: HackerEarth

Coding activities with purpose. Help solve real-world problems for businesses with innovative programming solutions while joining a community of coders working on improving their skills.

#36: HackerRank

Unearth your inner coding competitor and solve challenges while interacting on a leading recruitment site for companies (meaning, it’s a resume builder!)

#37: Codewars

A great resource to train yourself, collaborate with others, and create in a variety of programming languages.

#38: Exercism

The website promises to help you “Get really good at programming.”

Can’t argue with that.

Practice problems (mini-quests) for newbies and experts, tailored to your interests, whether you want to learn to code, increase fluency in your chosen language, or develop clean code. Just submit your solutions and get helpful feedback. Works through GitHub.

Books To Learn To Code

No dull, dusty textbooks here — these programming reads can provide you with useful reading material.

#39: The Self-Taught Programmer

The perfect manual for self-studiers, written by one of coding’s own amateur-turned-professional graduates. ($9.99 Kindle Book)

#40: A Data-Centric Introduction To Computing

Want to start at computer science 101 and build your skills from a foundation of computing basics? This is the book for you.

Read this free online book to get an intro course on all things comp sci.

#41: Software Engineering For Internet Applications

Writing lines of code is one thing. Software development—actually building functional software—is more complex. Check out this book that goes beyond computer programming and shares how to plan and develop actual software products.

#42: Foundations Of Data Science

If you were gripped by the likes of Python or SQL, you may be more interested in data science than purely writing code. This book eschews writing code and delves into the world of advanced data and mathematics.

#43: How To Learn To Code & Get A Developer Job

Written by Quincy Larson, the founder of FreeCodeCamp, this book bridges practical programming skills with applications in the real world. If your goal is to use your skills to start a new job or career in computer programming, this will help you get there!

Coding Mentors And Meetups

Want to meet with like-minded individuals? Find a mentor or coding event in your area.

#44: Reddit Programming Buddies

Virtual classified ads for programmers; identify programming comrades that match your unique skills and interests and collaborate on personalized projects.

#45: CodeNewbie

This social media site and community allows you to connect with others learning to code. Share progress, ask questions, and learn together.

#46: CodeBuddies

This is a large community of programmers who connect via Slack and organize study (screen-sharing) hangouts. Make your hangouts as unique as your project.

Bonus: Coding Podcasts

Load up your device with audio coding lessons and listen on your commute or during your workout. Once you’ve mastered the coding courses, perhaps you’ll even decide to start your own podcast.

#47: Coding Blocks

Shoptalk about development best practices relevant to a number of different programming languages.

#48: DevRadio

Though its last episode came out a few years ago, you can listen to Microsoft’s DevRadio, a by-developers, for-developers podcast with lots of software and programming info.

#49: Software Engineering Daily

Featured interviews with experts that touch on tech topics like mobile app development and developer testing.

#50: Developer Tea

A snackable-size podcast designed for busy schedules. Listen to quick bites on all kinds of developer-designed details.

#51: Programming Throwdown

A perfect podcast if you want a little taste of everything; each show covers a different programming language, so you can expand your coding knowledge with each episode.

#52: CodeNewbie

This weekly podcast features stories and useful lessons from other individuals who are on their self-taught programming path.

Cost: Free

#53: Learn To Code With Me

Laurence Bradford’s weekly podcast helps self-taught coders transition to the tech field with useful real-world examples and tips on developing marketable skills and enhancing your resume.

Bonus #2: Coding For Kids

Turns out, it’s never too soon to start introducing your tots to their first bytes.

#54: C++ for Kids (Code Babies)

This board book will introduce your infants to C++ programming fundamentals. Also, check out HTML for Babies and Javascript for Babies, all in conjunction with site Code Babies.

(Amazon, $9.19)

#55: CSFirst

This Google-backed project offers a range of free resources that introduce kids to coding and computer science concepts.

#56: Code.org Student

A youthful resource for finding online programming courses or local classes. Includes games and activities.

#57: MoonHack

A record-setting event for Code Club where kids ages 7 to 18 around the world join together to tackle projects. Participants can take on MoonHack’s recommended problem or their own idea (moon-themed, of course). According to its website, over the last six years, more than 150,000 kids have coded as part of Moonhack.

#58: Code Your Own Games!: 20 Games To Create With Scratch

Entice youth early to get involved in coding with this easy-to-follow (and super fun) visual guide that helps them learn to program their own games. Gaming + learning = win-win.

(Amazon, $11.69)

Calling All Self-Taught Tinkerers

Whether you’re just learning to write your first function or you’ve been speaking machine language since you were in diapers, DreamHost is for you.

Our mission is simple. We make it easy to bring your dream to life.

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The post Learn to Code With These (Mostly Free) Resources appeared first on Website Guides, Tips & Knowledge.

16 Popular CSS Frameworks That Will Help You Save Time (With Style)

Ian Hernandez — Thu, 22 Jun 2023 14:00:54 +0000

Back in my day, a stylesheet was just a stylesheet.

You hand-coded the CSS for every element. And we liked it that way.

Ahem. Okay. Disengaging curmudgeon mode.

CSS has come a long way since the days of raw HTML pages, and one of the most important developments is the creation and proliferation of CSS frameworks. These tools make it light years easier for developers and designers to build and launch new projects, both big and small.

They also have a huge impact on users and the way we experience the web. Frameworks create a shared language for UI and UX on websites and web applications, making nearly every site easier to understand, navigate, and use.

Today, about 1 in every 4 websites on the internet is built using a CSS framework.

In this article, we’ll explore 16 of the most popular frameworks and how they’re used by everyone from the enterprise to indie hackers.

Table of Contents

What is a CSS Framework?

Benefits of Using a CSS Framework

Key Features of a Modern CSS Framework

16 Popular CSS Frameworks

Choose the Best CSS Framework for Your Project

Keep Building

What is a CSS Framework?

A CSS framework is a pre-prepared library of code to help implement fast and consistent website styling and layouts. Frameworks include pre-written, reusable code for common design elements and components that can be easily applied to base HTML to create familiar and consistent user interfaces or website designs.

CSS frameworks are used by front-end developers to quickly deploy things like responsive grids, styled forms, buttons, or other important UI elements on web pages and apps.

Benefits of Using a CSS Framework

Okay, but why bother using a framework?

Couldn’t you just build all of this stuff yourself? Well, yeah. But that’s kind of the point. Frameworks are the inevitable outcome of a world where designers and developers write the same basic CSS over and over again for each website or app.

Why not just write it once and use it everywhere? That’s why they exist.

Speed Up Development Time

The simplest answer as to why people use frameworks: Speed. Frameworks come out of the box with plenty of elements and styles you would otherwise need to build from scratch when developing a website.

So why recreate the wheel?

Many developers and web designers also use frameworks as a tool for rapidly prototyping new websites or apps before building a custom design system.

Consistent Style and Design

The other key benefit of using a CSS framework is that all of your styles, UI elements, buttons, and more will look consistent out of the box. You won’t have to spend hours (or days or weeks or years) tweaking individual styles to ensure they all have the same padding, spacing, and font sizes.

Since the framework has already been meticulously crafted, all the tedious work is done.

As an added benefit, the most popular CSS frameworks are widely used, helping the website look and feel familiar to users. That’s clutch from a UX standpoint.

Last but not least, consider accessibility. Most popular frameworks are built for a wide range of devices and screen sizes, making them more accessible to a broader range of users.

Facilitate Responsive Design

Let’s be honest: Building a perfectly responsive layout is a pain.

There are so many variables and factors to consider. Then extrapolate from there to all the millions of devices, and your perfect grid system quickly becomes a mess.

Once again, modern CSS frameworks have you covered. They’ve done the hard work (and math) to build a pixel-perfect responsive design system. All you have to do is apply the correct CSS classes.

Improve Collaboration and Maintainability

Raise your hand if you like maintaining someone else’s code, creating docs, and deciphering someone else’s comments.

That’s a big no.

Since most frameworks come with an extensive documentation library and a community of users, you get the benefit of a common codebase and extremely well-documented information on exactly how to use said system.

Plus, most of them are open-source projects. That means you can freely use, adapt, and even (in some cases) redistribute your own version if that’s your thing.

Key Features of a Modern CSS Framework

CSS frameworks run a pretty broad gamut, but most of them have some key features in common.

Predefined Grid Systems and Layouts

Grids make the web go….not ‘round? They make the web into perfectly-proportionate boxes. That’s what they do.

Most CSS frameworks have a built-in grid system that helps create a flexible and fluid layout for the website. The system usually offers lots of customization that makes it easily adaptable to different screen sizes, resolutions, and page structures.

Responsive Media Queries

The other nice thing that most frameworks handle out of the box is media queries to automatically adjust styles based on device characteristics.

These systems can be complex and tedious to develop from scratch, but they’re a critical part of the modern web to ensure content scales and displays properly on various devices

Pre-built UI Components and Templates

Most CSS frameworks come with a library of pre-built, pre-styled UI components. Things like buttons, forms, tables, toggles, and more – all ready to use by just applying a simple class.

This makes it faster to build interfaces and pages, plus it creates a foundation for a consistent look and familiar UI throughout the website (and across the web).

Typography and Theme Customization Options

Many of the frameworks shared here come with built-in customizing and theming options. This makes it super simple to apply things like your brand colors, preferred fonts, and other personal touches that transform the look and feel to match your brand’s style.

DreamHost Glossary

Typography

Typography is a process of arranging a typeface in variations of font, size, and spacing. This involves making text’s appearance, style, and arrangement readable and visually pleasing.

1. Bootstrap

Bootstrap began as a side project built and shared by developers at Twitter. Now it’s the most widely-used CSS framework for responsive, mobile-first web design. Millions of people use Bootstrap to craft clean, consistent, and familiar web layouts.

Key features:

Responsive grid system
Pre-built UI components
Customizable and extensible themes
Extensive documentation

Many companies, including Twitter (obviously), Spotify, and Udacity, have used the Bootstrap framework in part or fully on their websites.

Why People Love Bootstrap

The reasons to love Bootstrap are the reasons to love frameworks– it’s simple, clean, and easy to use.

There’s a huge community of experts with experience building with Bootstrap to answer almost any question you can imagine.

And, although it sometimes gets a reputation for being vanilla, Bootstrap is pretty dang customizable if you want to go beyond what comes out of the box.

What People Don’t Like About Bootstrap

By far, the biggest knock on Bootstrap is that all of the sites using it look the same.

“They’re boring,” some will cry.

But that’s generally just the result of people using it exactly how it comes without taking much time to experiment or customize.

One other thing to be aware of is that the framework is quite bulky overall. The file size may be bigger than you’d expect for a simple website. That’s probably part of the reason why the State of CSS Survey found that satisfaction with Bootstrap is split about 50/50.

2. Tailwind CSS

Tailwind is perhaps as much a movement as it is a framework.

The creator, Adam Wathan, wrote something of a manifesto about the thinking behind Tailwind. And essentially, the idea is that CSS shouldn’t be descriptive and semantic (e.g., “.header” class), but instead should be functional (e.g., “.center-flex-3”).

He calls it a utility-first CSS framework.

And this approach seems to work for many people. Tailwind ranks highest in satisfaction on the State of CSS survey at about 80%.

Key features:

Utility classes for easy styling
Responsive design capabilities
Customizable configuration
Component-friendly approach

Many well-known tech companies like OpenAI (ChatGPT), Shopify, Wealthfront, and Loom use Tailwind CSS.

Why People Love Tailwind

Since Tailwind is utility-first, it has nearly endless flexibility.

There aren’t really prebuilt layouts in the same way as, say, Bootstrap. Instead, you can combine and layer classes to position your HTML elements in a nearly infinite number of layouts and CSS grids.

The main thing people like about this approach is that they can style their divs without referring to the documentation. Since the utility classes are intuitively named (for the most part), you can quickly apply styles without constantly flipping between the CSS library and the markup.

What People Don’t Like About Tailwind

In a nutshell: People don’t like change, right?

Tailwind breaks some well-worn traditions for CSS frameworks and even web development more broadly.

There are many arguments for why this approach to CSS code is suboptimal. The “separation of concerns” is the underlying principle behind how CSS (and most other code) is written. Tailwind puts that concept, well, on its tail.

Bonus: Daisy UI

If Tailwind’s utility framework isn’t your cup of tea, there is a great library called Daisy UI, written by Pouya Saadeghi, a plugin that builds on-top of Tailwind CSS giving you a set of classes that feels more reminiscent of Bootstrap.

Daisy UI provides class names for common UI components like buttons, cards, toggles, and more, allowing developers to focus on more critical aspects of their project instead of styling basic elements. It is built on top of Tailwind CSS, and hence everything can be customized using utility classes.

One of the significant benefits of using Daisy UI is that it significantly reduces the number of class names you need to write, by approximately 80%, and can make your HTML size about 70% smaller. Furthermore, it adds a set of customizable color names to Tailwind CSS, providing developers with the flexibility to create Dark Mode and other themes without adding new class names.

3. Bulma

Bulma is a lightweight CSS framework based on Flexbox.

The syntax of this framework is plain-language, meaning it relies heavily on descriptive utility classes or modifiers like “.button” and “.is-large”.

Key features:

Flexbox-based grid system
Modular architecture
Sass-powered for easy customization
Minimalistic code and design

Examples of well-known websites using Bulma: CSS Ninja and Signal.

Why People Love Bulma

Bulma can feel a bit like the Lego set of CSS frameworks. It’s extremely simple and easy to understand which makes it great for beginners or folks who just want a quick solution.

By applying a few logically-named classes, you can build out modules, apply CSS animations, and create more advanced styling. There are no JavaScript dependencies, so you can use it in combination with pretty much any JavaScript framework.

DreamHost Glossary

JavaScript

JavaScript is a flexible programming language that makes websites more engaging and interactive. It teams up with HTML and CSS to improve how users experience websites and apps.

What People Don’t Like About Bulma

The simplicity of Bulma can be a double-edged sword.

While it’s great as a tutorial or introduction to CSS frameworks, more advanced developers would likely complain that it lacks the sophistication or extensibility of more robust options.

4. Foundation

On the opposite end of the spectrum from Bulma, we have Foundation.

Foundation makes no qualms about being advanced and, as such, fairly complex compared to some of the other choices. It’s a responsive front-end framework designed for mobile-first development and used for both sites and emails, and it’s used by approximately 500,000 websites worldwide.

Key features:

Responsive grid system
Comprehensive set of UI components
Customizable Sass variables
Integration with popular front-end tools and libraries

Why People Love Foundation

Foundation is kind of the O.G.

It’s been around since before the Willennium millennium, which means many developers are well-versed in Foundation and familiar with its syntax and conventions.

It’s also a mature product. It has tons of features, extensive documentation, and resources.

Plus, it’s considered one of the best frameworks for accessibility.

What People Don’t Like About Foundation

Like most mature products, Foundation can feel a bit bulky compared to modern, lightweight frameworks.

It’s accrued a lot of requested features and customization options that make the codebase and file sizes a bit heavier. Plus, because conventions have shifted, the learning curve is a bit steep for a beginner used to something like Tailwind or Bootstrap.

5. Semantic UI

“Everything arbitrary is mutable.”

That’s the dogma of Semantic UI.

At its core, this framework is built to help build and scale familiar-feeling interfaces for websites and web applications.

Key features:

Intuitive and human-readable class names
Wide range of UI components and layouts
Customizable themes and styles
Integration with popular JavaScript libraries and frameworks like Angular

Many sites and companies use Semantic UI, including Accenture and Snapchat.

Why People Love Semantic UI

Semantic UI has an easy-to-understand syntax that makes it easy to build out from its vast collection of UI components, including buttons, modals, cards, toggles, text fields, and more.

But perhaps the most popular wizardry is the theming and customization.

Semantic includes a theming library with over 3,000 customizable variables and then inherited across all of your UI components.

What People Don’t Like About Semantic UI

Since Semantic is so UI-focused and so extensive, it may contain a lot of code that goes unused in your project. This means that some folks will find it overly bulky for simpler projects compared to more contained frameworks.

6. Materialize

Materialize CSS framework is based on Google’s Material Design principles.

It emphasizes bold visual design and UX-focused animation (motion).

Materialize is pretty popular, with over 38,000 stars on GitHub.

Key features:

Material-design-inspired components and styles
Responsive grid system
Sass-powered customization
Built-in JavaScript plugins

Materialize is used by a broad range of sites, but most sites in their showcase are small businesses and personal projects.

Why People Love Materialize

Materialize is a simple, few-frills solution for setting up a clean and usable website. They don’t really offer the moon, but that’s one of the reasons people like it.

What People Don’t Like About Materialize

As is always the case, simplicity also means limitations. Materialize is not as robust or extensible as other frameworks, and relies on JavaScript for specific motions.

7. UIkit (UI Kit)

Another modular framework focused on website and web app interfaces, UIkit is slightly less popular than Semantic UI, but that doesn’t make it any less powerful.

UIkit is a UI-focused framework used by many sites and web apps, including Crunchyroll, Moqups, and Rover.

Key features:

Modular architecture with selective imports (huge!)
Responsive grid system
Sass variables and mixins for customization
Extensive UI component library

Why People Love UIkit

UIkit is perhaps a bit smaller in market share, but it’s also smaller in footprint, file size, and complexity.

Without losing much in the way of functionality, UIkit offers an extremely lightweight and comprehensive UI component library. It’s highly customizable with simple setup – using either the provided build process or using your own (with Less).

What People Don’t Like About UIkit

Probably the biggest drawback to UIkit is that it’s a bit more under-the-radar than some of the bigger and more popular frameworks.

But, you know, that makes it cool, right?

On a serious note: There’s a smaller community of users, which may make it more challenging to find answers to questions or find tutorials on specific implementations.

8. Ant Design

Ant Design is a bit more than a CSS framework; It’s a design system with a set of high-quality React components for building rich, interactive user interfaces.

Built and released by Ant Group (parent company of Alibaba), Ant Design is similar to design systems released by US tech companies like Alphabet and X (née Google and Twitter).

Key features:

Comprehensive set of UI components
Consistent design language and style
Customizable themes and appearance
Extensive documentation and community support

Examples of well-known websites using Ant Design (unsurprisingly): Alibaba, Tencent, and Baidu

Why People Love Ant Design

Ant Design is an extremely robust collection of resources for designers and developers. Going beyond just the CSS framework, there’s an entire system (nay, language) that can be applied directly to your own projects.

There’s a huge community, and the design system has been tried, tested, and proven across businesses and projects, generating billions of dollars in revenue.

Think of it like a franchise model for your web project.

What People Don’t Like About Ant Design

As you perhaps guessed, with extensive functionality comes extensive file size.

The entire Ant Design system (un-minified) weighs in at about 100MB.

The other limitation is that Ant Design is pretty purpose-built for React projects. If you’re using another JavaScript library, it might be difficult to adapt the components.

9. Primer

The CSS framework behind GitHub’s design and UI components, Primer is a super popular framework choice for developers and developer-first websites and apps.

It’s purpose-built and feels familiar to anyone who’s spent time rooting around the repos.

Key features:

Modular architecture with selective imports
Responsive grid system
Sass-powered customization
Built-in accessibility features

Why People Love Primer

Primer is like a great piece of infrastructure; It’s understated and simple, but does the job really well. Plus, knowing that the team behind GitHub created (and maintains) the library is a big boost to the longevity and reliability of the project.

What People Don’t Like About Primer

As you may have guessed, GitHub’s design aesthetic isn’t the right choice for every project.

So the main complaint is that Primer isn’t as universal as other frameworks, and isn’t an ideal choice for projects or websites not built for developers. It also has a limited UI component set that makes sense in the GitHub ecosystem.

10. Tachyons

“Fast-loading, highly-readable, and 100% responsive interfaces” is the promise of the Tachyons framework.

Built to use minimal CSS, Tachyons is ideally suited for standing up a quick homepage, personal portfolio, or project site.

Key features:

Atomic CSS architecture with utility classes
Responsive design capabilities
Minimal setup and configuration
Small file size for fast loading

Why People Love Tachyons

People love Tachyons because it’s a quick and simple framework. It’s lightweight and fast-loading, which makes it ideal for small projects, personal sites, and other simple use cases.

It’s like the Honda Civic (base model!) of frameworks.

You know what you’re getting. It works. And it’s reliable.

What People Don’t Like About Tachyons

It would take quite a bit of work to use Tachyons for a more complicated or visually-complex project, meaning it won’t be the first choice for anyone looking for more than a simple, grid-powered page or two.

11. Pure (Pure CSS)

Yahoo!

That’s a name you don’t hear all the time. (Unless you’re on Jeopardy answering a question about alternatives to Google, maybe.)

But their CSS framework, Pure CSS, has become quite popular for hackers and hustlers alike. With 23k stars and 2.5k forks on GitHub, it’s definitely one of the most popular choices on this list.

Key features:

Small and lightweight
Responsive grids
Built on Normalize.css
Out-of-the-box form handling

Why People Love Pure

PureCSS is a favorite powerup for custom CSS or as an addition to other frameworks. It’s ultra-lightweight and offers many useful components that can easily bolt onto existing systems.

This makes it simple to add grids, forms, buttons, tables, and more to your current stack.

What People Don’t Like About Pure

Pure works best as an add-on rather than a standalone framework. It doesn’t have a comprehensive library like other solutions and doesn’t offer theming or other features that make it easy to customize the look and feel of the project with a few quick edits.

12. Material Design Lite

Speaking of Google, in addition to Materialize, they’ve also open-sourced their Material Design Lite framework. As the name suggests, it’s a lighter, simpler version of the Material Design-inspired framework.

It uses less JavaScript and is built to be more accessible on a broader range of devices and browsers.

You can see Material Design Lite (MDL) on full display by visiting sites like Google Wallet, Google for Work, Google’s developer site, and more.

Key features:

Material Design philosophy and UI components
Large number of components out of the box, such as buttons, cards, sliders, spinners, and more
No external dependencies
Theming options

Why People Love MDL

MDL comes with an ultra-functional set of components for apps, forms, and more.

Since it’s built on Material Design principles, usability and accessibility are front and center in the designs and the components.

What People Don’t Like About MDL

MDL is technically depreciated at this stage, so the system won’t receive any updates or support.

Beyond that, the whole aesthetic can feel a bit limiting. It feels very much like it was created for Google products, for better or worse.

13. Spectre.css

Spectre is another great option for getting up and running quickly. This lightweight, minimalist framework gives you many of the building blocks you need to go from zero to launch with a good-looking site and familiar UI components.

Key features:

Small (~10KB gzipped) filesize
Flexbox-based grid
Built-in utility classes

Why People Love Spectre

Spectre is ideal for a simple, minimal, and clean aesthetic. The focus here is on pure usability and efficiency — You won’t get a lot of extra bells or whistles, but it’ll do the job.

What People Don’t Like About Spectre

If you’re looking for a sprawling framework with advanced theming options, a thriving community, and tons of documentation, this probably isn’t the pick for you.

Spectre is a little more under the radar. It’s a capable tool for the job but doesn’t have anywhere near the kind of popularity and adoption as Foundation or Bootstrap.

14. Milligram

Another lesser-known framework, Milligram is extremely small and lightweight. Even more so than the other small frameworks we’ve covered.

It’s the ultimate option for minimalist design and a quick, straightforward solution for standing up a project.

Key features:

Minimalist design
Very small (~2kb gzip)
Flexbox grid system

Why People Love Milligram

Milligram is potentially the lightest, simplest CSS framework you can use to build a project right out of the box. It has many of the most important features of other frameworks but with an astonishingly small footprint.

The conventions and classes also make it pretty easy to learn on the fly.

What People Don’t Like About Milligram

Milligram suffers from the same drawbacks as other lesser-known systems on the list. Lower overall popularity means that there’s less community support. Even so, the documentation is on par with much larger frameworks, and the simplicity may reduce the need for any additional help.

15. Water.css

Water is a classless CSS system that you just drop into a static site. It’s not a system in the way that the other frameworks are designed. Instead, it applies the styles directly to the HTML elements on the page, giving you a quick design system without the need (or ability) to build more complex layouts.

Key features:

No classes
Extremely lightweight
Two themes out-of-the-box: light and dark mode.
Fully responsive

Why People Love Water

Water is great for a quick CSS solution, a boilerplate of styles, or a simple mockup.

It does what it says on the tin, making it a great, ultra-fast, no-fuss solution.

What People Don’t Like About Water

Water’s simply not going to work for any complex website or app project. It doesn’t have grids, it lacks many components that you’d need for larger projects, and ultimately prioritizes simplicity (to the extreme) at the expense of customization or extensibility.

16. Vanilla

Vanilla Framework or Vanilla CSS (not to be confused with the colloquial term vanilla CSS, referring to base-level or traditional CSS) is a framework created and used by Canonical, the parent company of Ubuntu.

Key features:

Scalable architecture suitable for large web projects
Modular systems
Built on Sass

Why People Love Vanilla

Although less popular than the big frameworks like Bootstrap, Vanilla has the backing, resources, documentation, and even support of an enterprise-level product.

There’s an extremely detailed analysis related to accessibility and meticulously detailed notes on compatibility with different browsers (down to the specific version) and screens.

The components and styling are simple and universal, too.

What People Don’t Like About Vanilla

The project might indeed be a bit vanilla for some tastes. That is to say, the design aesthetic is largely neutral and functional without much flare.

Choose the Best CSS Framework for Your Project

Now that we’ve shared 16 awesome options, how do you choose the right one?

As always, there is no right or wrong answer here, but there are some key questions that you might use to narrow down your options.

Project Requirements and Goals

The best place to start is by understanding the type of project you’re building. If you’re creating a simple website for a small project or personal use, then a lightweight and simple system like Water or Milligram.

But if you need something more robust, you might opt for Foundation or Bootstrap.

Learning Curve and Ease of Use

Next, consider the system’s complexity versus your or your team’s capabilities. Are you experts at diving into new CSS frameworks? Or is this your first time using something that’s not home-baked?

Understanding how to use a CSS framework takes a bit of learning in-and-of itself. If you’ve never worked with a framework, you’d probably be better off choosing a simple starting option. Then, once you have the hang of the meta, you can dive into learning more complex systems.

Customizability and Flexibility

Are you building something that needs to adhere tightly to existing brand or design guidelines?

Then you’ll want to choose an option that has built-in theming and customization to make it easy to match the necessary styles and design systems.

If you’re more adaptable, you can choose a system with a distinct style but lacks some of the flexibility of the more robust systems.

Community Support and Resources

Having a community of folks using the framework can make all the difference. Look for community forums, Discord servers, or subreddits to see how many people are helping other users and how active the community is for each framework.

Performance and File Size

Be sure to consider the file size and performance of the frameworks you evaluate.

While your website’s performance is influenced by many factors (like your web hosting), the CSS can also greatly impact your pages, file sizes, and loading speed.

Keep Building

Hopefully this list of CSS frameworks gave you an idea of where to start on your next project.

Whether you’re building the next Facebook or a personal website to showcase your rock collection, we love helping creatives and entrepreneurs build a beautiful internet.

Be sure to sign up for our newsletter to get the latest how-to guides, trends, and tips on building and growing your website and business.

Ian Hernandez, Author at Website Guides, Tips & Knowledge

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