How to Use Bootstrap with WordPress?

Using WordPress to develop your website is always a good idea. As of December 2021, the co-founder and CEO of WordPress said that the WordPress content management system reached 43% market share. That means a lot of people use it, and believe it’s the best solution to use for your website. Once you choose WordPress, there’s so many tools to design your site.

If you’re looking to build a fast, mobile-first type theme, then **Bootstrap might be an option you might want to consider. In this article, you’ll learn what Bootstrap is, the difference between Bootstrap and WordPress, and even how to use Bootstrap with WordPress.

Bootstrap was designed by Twitter designers and open-source. Please don’t confuse it with Twitter’s design, as Bootstrap isn’t used on Twitter. Bootstrap is a widely used design framework for rapidly and simply creating mobile-responsive websites.

It's a free, fully designed front-end framework with a collection of HTML and CSS elements for generating bespoke features like typography, navigation bars, and buttons, as well as a number of optional JavaScript plugins for further functionality and responsive layout. Both Bootstrap and WordPress are free to download and customize, and they are both backed by a global web development community.

In website design and development, frameworks are fundamental in building a bespoke website and theme to fulfill a variety of demands. They can streamline the development process, because the entire website doesn't have to be coded from scratch and can instead rely on the framework's high-quality built-in code.

With Bootstrap, it’s fully mobile responsiveness and customizable. For the basic user, this makes it really simple to understand HTML and CSS, in order to create responsive pages on your website, without the usage of third-party responsive functionalities such as plugins. Essentially this means that less plugins, means a faster loading website.

A faster loading website basically means less website visitors waiting for your website to load. These days a lot of people have no patience for waiting for your site to show up on their mobile device, which means missing out on sales, subscribers, or whatever you want your visitors to do on your website.

While Bootstrap wasn’t originally created with WordPress in mind, it can be integrated into an existing WordPress site, so you can take advantage of its CSS styling components.

To make sure there’s no confusion, remember that Bootstrap is a design framework and WordPress is an extremely popular content management system.

The use of Bootstrap as a framework theme for a WordPress theme, is an example of how Bootstrap and WordPress work hand-in-hand together. Essentially, Bootstrap is the design, and you can still use the powerful content editor that WordPress has. And yes, it works with Gutenberg or Classic editor.

Again, the basis of using Bootstrap to construct a website from scratch, is to take advantage but we're talking about utilizing it to create a responsive WordPress theme. So, rather than adding Bootstrap to WordPress, we're leveraging the awesomesauce of both platforms.

One of the selling points for both WordPress and Bootstrap, are that both are fast loading out-of-the-box. However, with your content and images, plus any plugins installed, those start weighing down your site. So, choosing a theme that’s speedy versus some of the themes that are like a Swiss Army knife, which does almost anything, is a smart choice.

To design and utilize your own WordPress theme, first, you'll need a WordPress web hosting account. If you have a WordPress.com account, you won’t be able to use Bootstrap. You’ll need WordPress.org. Just in case, if you don’t know the difference, you can read our article at Verpex on WordPress.com versus WordPress.org. Oh, and just in case Verpex offers even hosting plans for WordPress. Our servers use LightSpeed, so with Bootstrap, your site’s going to be blazing fast!

There are quite a few tutorials on how to use Bootstrap with WordPress, but for the purpose of this blog’s readers, this method is the easiest. You don’t have to fool with adding extra code to your theme’s header.php file. There are actually some themes you can use, that include the code for Bootstrap, so it’s less steps than some of the development-intended tutorials out on the Interwebs.

If you’re a developer reading this article, you can download Bootstrap, and read their documentation.

With the following 3 Bootstrap for WordPress themes, you can simply install them from your WordPress admin, activate, and then go on your merry way with designing them how you want them to look.

Bootstrap Basic

This theme looks really simple, but has a lot of potential. Because it’s super simple, it loads really fast, out of the box. A lot of the work, to make it your own, is CSS styling, and adding your images and content.

You can find Bootstrap Basic in the WordPress theme directory, and download it here.

Bootscore

If you’re building an ecommerce site with WooCommerce, Bootscore may be really useful for you. There are so many components in WooCommerce, that Bootscores templates make it faster to create a great user-experience. Bootscore contains many other templates like different page formats, one-page styling, and more.

If you want to give Bootscore a spin, you can find it here.

WP Bootstrap 4

WP Bootstrap 4 is a starter WordPress theme, built with Bootstrap that is compatible with most popular WordPress plugins, and is quite speedy. This theme has a little more design out-of-the box, which makes is a lot easier for new web designers to work with.

Sounds like something you’d like to use, you can find WP Bootstrap 4 here.

While this article features only 3 Bootstrap for WordPress themes, there are many more free themes available around the Internet. So, if you’re looking for something different, you can Google “Bootstrap themes for WordPress” and check out what’s out there.

So, now that you know about the Bootstrap theme framework, and have a few free themes, it’s time to try out and see how swift your site will run.

To ensure optimal performance, consider using our Bootstrap hosting, tailored specifically for sites built with Bootstrap. With fast load times, reliable uptime, and expert support, our hosting solution will help you get the most out of your Bootstrap-powered website.