There are a lot of themes available for Bootstrap, both free and paid. In general, there is not much of a difference in the quality between paid and free themes, but if you go for a paid theme, there are many more options to choose from.
There are many websites that offer Bootstrap themes. The following are some of the popular ones:
- http://bootswatch.com (free)
- http://startbootstrap.com (free)
- http://jobpixels.com (free)
- http://bootstrappage.com (free and paid)
- http://wrapbootstrap.com (paid)
- http://themes.walkingpixels.com (paid)
- http://themeforest.net (paid)
You may be wondering why someone would buy a theme instead of just making their own. The reason is simple yet easily overlooked. It is not that easy to build a professional Bootstrap theme, especially not a responsive one. There is a great deal that you need to know about Bootstrap and LESS in order to do so. Do not worry; you will soon build your own theme and see how challenging it can be.
In order to make things easier, just choose Journal (http://bootswatch.com/journal/), a modern newspaper-like theme, for your first Bootstrap app. This way, you do not need to browse through thousands of themes and try to decide which one to go with. Go ahead and download Journal from Bootswatch; for now, you only need the bootstrap.min.css file. Next, you will add your newly downloaded theme to the project that we started in the previous chapter.