I’ve decided to move (from static-site-generator) or create all my sites with Grav and before jumping into creating some theme(s) I wonder whether to use Gantry theme framework for that or not?
Let me say that I’m solely interested for Grav sites (iow. no Joomla, WP) and have no clients for which to create themes - iow. they are for me and/or non-profit organization where I serve…so my main concern is whether in such case Gantry creates unnecessary bloat in which case it’s better to simply use some CSS framework like UIKit, Bulma, etc.?
Hi there! I’d personally answer ‘it depends’.
If you’d like to utilize point-and-click interface via Admin panel, or Gantry’s system of ‘Particles’ (which are type of widgets), and of course have the time to learn new framework, Gantry could be quite interesting to you.
If you prefer to create themes by hand (like me ) as well as having complete control over your code, Gantry is probably not the best solution.
Cheers!
I’m not a web designer and would like to be pragmatic, iow. create a simple theme(s), but my main concern in regard to Gantry is whether it creates too much bloat to do what it does since I want my sites to be lean in regard to CSS and that’s why I’m considering lighter frameworks and not a big ones like Bootstrap, Foundation, SemanticUI etc. ?
Well, go to http://demo.gantry.org and see the source, that’s the easiest way to find out if it suit your need for leanness
Also, if you crave for theme light in CSS (I agree!) - when you create new theme with Dev Tools, it by default links Pure CSS, which is extremally lightweight and yet very comprehensive.
I’ve decided to try with Gantry and took advantage of the sale-day to buy some themes in order to have easy start as well as to show some appreciation for the Grav/Gantry developers for giving us great products for free!
) as well as having complete control over your code, Gantry is probably not the best solution.
If not, I will always be happy to help with developing custom theme