After months and months of hard work I am happy to introduce BUILDER, a free child theme for UnderStrap that eliminates the need to code a WordPress + Bootstrap site built from masses of feedback.

After surveying over 4,000 UnderStrap dowload’ers in 2019 it was clear a lot of people were having trouble just getting the basics of a website working. The clear picture was that people want to work with Bootstrap in WordPress and were looking for the easiest route to take.

A lot of people were having issues with navbars for example, they wanted a way for them to work straight away in a layout different from what comes with UnderStrap by default. We could have created a plugin that would have added just that additional functionality or maybe even added it into the main UnderStrap release but we decided to take it a lot further…

What is UnderStrap BUILDER?

BUILDER is a child theme that you can now download for free from its hub page here. Once installed it adds a lot more functionality to the Customizer screen, more than enough to make an impressive website for a client or to get an idea off the ground.

Another impressive element to BUILDER is the template library that opens up a wealth of importable demo sites in a few clicks. The idea is to expand on this greatly over time, helping keep BUILDER moving with the trends as they change.

Then using Gutenberg and a free Bootstrap rows/columns plugin you can alter the structure and content of pages and posts to make a very wide range of websites.

The beauty of all of this is that you never have to touch any PHP or HTML – you don’t even have to touch CSS – but if you do and you know some basic Bootstrap classes (or you could just search the Bootstrap website) you can take your site even further.

We have a documentation hub and getting started for BUILDER too here that you can browse through if you need any further questions answered, although we highly recommend you install and check it out for yourself.

More Info & Download BUILDER

The future of BUILDER

The to-do list for this project is now much longer than when we began. Thanks to beta testers we were fed back useful ideas that we would love to implement yesterday not tomorrow!

The plan is to add these and new templates to the library as fast as we can and push these releases as and when.

In the UnderStrap BUILDER options page you will find a way to manually check for updates (or leave it alone to auto-check 12 every hours) to get access to the latest changes.

If you have any ideas or suggestions while you are using it we would love to hear from you. A Facebook group has been created for BUILDER here which we keep an eye on.

Future Features In Store

• Slider instead of hero – will probably just be the sake of setting up compatibility with a bunch of popular ready to go solutions
• Background image manager – add background images and classes to use in Gutenberg blocks
• Mega menus – a system for managing Bootstrap mega menus
• Mobile features – more mobile features like mobile-friendly drop downs on nav
• Spacing – total control over spacing between elements, a large cumbersome job right now
• Top message bar – above the nav: a place for another menu, info and maybe CTA
• Branding – a way to make a logo/branding using ready to go templates and image uploaders/text fields (would be great for quick affiliate sites etc.)
• Social media – display social media profiles around the site from one core menu
• Loading page – show a page or loading effect while the page loads for the visitor, great for heavier image sites
• WooCommerce – a large amount of work would be needed but this would open BUILDER up to becoming an e-commerce site builder too
• Easy Digital Downloads – the popular download e-commerce solution would be a great addition to BUILDER

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