Downloading Bootstrap

There are many ways to download Bootstrap, but not all ways of downloading Bootstrap are equal. For what follows, we must be sure to get the LESS files as these files give us the power to customize and innovate upon Bootstrap's underlying style rules. For this exercise, we'll go straight to the source, that is, GetBootstrap.com.

Once there, the large Download source button is your friend. At least as of Version 3.0.2, this is the second large button on the homepage of GetBootstrap.com.

In case something should change, you can always follow the GitHub project link, and once at the GitHub repository, click on the Download ZIP button.

The files you'll have

Once you've downloaded the Bootstrap source files, you should see a file structure that is similar to the following screenshot:

Admittedly, that's a lot of files, and we don't need them all. On the plus side, we have everything we want from Bootstrap.

While the exact contents of the repository will change over time, the main contents will remain relatively consistent. Most notably, in the less folder, you will find all the important LESS files, which are key to every project in this book. Another benefit is that the js folder contains Bootstrap's individual JavaScript plugins so that these may be selectively included as needed.

On the other hand, if you want Bootstrap's default precompiled CSS or JavaScript files (such as bootstrap.css or bootstrap.min.js), those are still available within the dist folder. As a bonus, you'll find the example HTML templates in the examples folder. In fact, we'll use one of these examples to set up our first project template folder.