Preview: http://leemunroe.github.io/motherplate/example.html

This is a bare bones HTML/CSS framework I'll start off most web projects with.

It includes a CSS reset and a bunch of minimal boilerplate styles that should come in useful for any project, including a responsive grid, typography, icons and forms.

It is not as in depth as something like HTML5 Boilerplate and doesn't include styled components like Bootstrap.

It can be used for a static web project as is, or you can copy the CSS folder into an existing framework.

Using Motherplate for your project? Let me know so I can check it out.

• Uses SCSS partials to help structure the CSS.
• Uses Compass to take advantage of CSS3 mixins so you don't have to worry about browser prefixes (-webkit- etc.).
• Responsive-ready 12-column grid system to work across all devices.
• Uses Font-Awesome icon fonts for icons.
• Uses Normalize to reset browser styles.
• Only enough CSS to get you started; minimal visual styling with this boilerplate.
• Only the HTML/JS you need to get started; very little components with this boilerplate.

This will vary depending on the framework you are using. The following is how to for a basic static website.

Motherplate uses SASS and Compass, which rely on Ruby.

OSX comes pre-installed with Ruby but if you need to you can download ruby here.

Open up terminal (or command line) and install compass .

$ gem update --system
$ gem install compass

Download and copy the motherplate files into your new project folder.

In terminal go to your project folder and run compass.

$ cd sites/mynewproject/
$ compass watch

When you make changes to any of the scss files, your main.css file will be automatically updated. You don't edit main.css directly, compass takes care of that for you.

If you were working on a Rails project for example, you could just copy the files in the css folder to app/assets/stylesheets. The asset pipeline (and compass-rails gem) would take care of the rest.

A bare bones index.html template.

• _config.scss Put all your variables in here e.g. colors, padding, border radius - this helps with consistency across your project.
• _forms.scss Some basic form styles.
• _grid.scss A basic responsive grid system with 12 columns.
• _icons.scss This is Font Awesome's CSS stylesheet.
• _ie.scss Any styles that you need to add in order for Internet Explorer to work.
• _layout.scss This is where your main styles go. I typically have header, footer, logo classes here.
• _links.scss Styles for any text links and/or buttons.
• _media.scss Styles for images, video etc.
• _mixins.scss Reusabled SASS mixins e.g. clearfix.
• _notifications.scss Alerts to notify or give feedback to the user
• _other.scss Small reusable other styles that don't fit the rest of the framework.
• _print.scss Basic print stylesheets to make your pages look better when printed.
• _reset.scss This is normalize.
• _responsive.scss Add any responsive styles here e.g. hide elements, show elements, resize elements.
• _shame.scss Keep this to hand for any quick and dirty CSS you need to add but plan to tidy later.
• _tables.scss Styles for tables.
• _type.scss Basic styling for your typography.
• main.scss This brings all the partials together. Compass only compiles files that don't have an underscore

As your project grows and you need to add more styles just create new .scss files and reference them anywhere in your main.scss file.

Typical files I'll end up adding include _nav.scss, _home.scss.

• I've included some basic Javascript including the latest jQuery and the document ready function.

• There is a /img folder for images.
• For images referenced in the CSS I tend to keep them in the css/assets/ folder e.g. sp.png is a sprite I can reference.
• Images referenced in the HTML are stored in the /img folder.

• Included font awesome for icons

• Compass Framework
• SASS
• normalize.css
• Font Awesome