Ok, so I realize that Bootstrap is going on version 4, but I decided to update from Bootstrap2 to Bootstrap3 anyway.

I wanted to do this for three reasons:

To learn a bit more about the Jinja2 templating engine
To learn a bit more about Pelican and the access to variables
Fun!

I had been patching the default bootstrap2 theme that is 'stock' with Pelican for a while now. As it happens, the theme didn't work out-of-the-box since Pelican itself has moved ahead of most of the stock themes. That patching process is what gave me the bug to create my own theme. I must admit, it is heavily influenced by the stock theme, just updated a bit to add my particular tastes.

Impressions

Boostrap

Overall, I'm quite impressed with Bootstrap. it is easy to pick up and use as-is. For anyone learning out there, I highly suggest doing a quick perusal through the w3schools tutorial and the tutorial republic tutorial.

While you are going through the tutorials, don't try to memorize any code or anything like that, but focus on what types of items are available. For instance, I was particularly impressed with the 'wells' like the sidebar is in.

There is one section that you should attempt to become quite familiar with and that is the grid and layout system. If you build your site heirarchically, then your layout will be in your 'base' template and you won't ever have to worry about the layout on any other page.

Jinja2

I have played with Jinja2 in the past and I am continually impressed with its capabilities. I suspect that any html work that I do will be using a templating engine and I like the Jinja2 syntax and capabilities, so I will likely stay in this space whenever possible.

Pelican

One shortcoming that I find with Pelican is the inability to place a class on all common elements generated from a markdown file. For instance, to apply a bootstrap class to a table, I have to create the table in html. This isn't unworkable, it just means that I can't type the pretty markdown tables. Same issue with images.

Future

Future work on the site will probably involve adding a comments section. I feel that this is a serious shortcoming on a technical blog. I will likely use disqus or something similar for the sake of simplicy.

When Bootstrap4 becomes mainstream (it is in beta now), I will likely move over to it as well. I don't feel that I need any new capability, but the process of using the more recentl libs will keep me up-to-date.