brace and bracket theme

Inspiration

As an experienced front end developer, I've come across multiple instances of having to create a webpage that is simple to manage, built on solid foundations, and one that is able to be extended without having to hire a full team of developers.

Having worked with Hubspot for the past few years, I can say that building on this platform is not only enjoyable as a developer, it is a force multiplier when it comes to building websites, single page applications, and micro-sites. Hubspot gives me the technology to build modern applications all while being able to hand off the same site created to other teams to manage -- for example the marketing team.

I want to be able to give the future users of this template the nimbleness that a lean CSS Framework like Bulma provides when paired with a state of the art Hubspot stack to build and release applications or sites.

What it does

The biggest feature on this theme is the ability to craft and display a rich hero section for your website. This Hero module works with the default branding of the site, in overwriting or working with the defaults for a single page or numerous websites and landing pages.

In addition to the hero module, this theme provides the purchaser a drag and drop experience with a list of re-usable modules that one can use to build and manage their website, landing page or microsite.

How we built it

Using the CSS Framework Bulma, we worked on creating a few re-usable HubSpot modules that can be used to compose different types of pages. These modules also have custom fields that tie in to the Bulma CSS to customize the modules per Bulma's Framework rules.

As these modules were built using this free open source CSS Framework, they are customizable and updateable to handle all types of Bulma additions and edits.

Challenges we ran into

Challenges we faced are always CSS. When we try to merge in a CSS Framework with a Platform like HubSpot, there's going to be different opinions and paradigms in building and development. Making a decision on what technology drives specific parts of the website is always a challenge. We feel that using Bulma for layouts and encompassing modules, we can leverage Hubspot's drag and drop feature and build pages in this hybrid approach.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

A big bonus and accomplishment for us is opening up the possibilities for two technologies to work together, building on an open source framework like Bulma opens the door for the Bulma community to help develop more themes and grow their community onto this platform.

What we learned

It takes a lot of work to publish something on this market place. HubSpot is an elegant platform with technology to help every type of customer in the world, and being able to develop something to help creators unleash their creativity within this platform is humbling. I'm still learning new features I should be including in our theme, but it's empowering knowing at the end of the day we're helping people build what they have been thinking of building.

What's next for brace and bracket theme

Big items are make the transition from Hubspot CSS to Bulma CSS. Import more Bulma components and features into this theme so it can mirror the feature set that is on the Bulma website.