What is this template that I keep seeing?

May 9, 2012 7:33 AM

I've seen a lot of new companies with landing pages whose layouts look exactly like Atlassian's.

I don't mean that their logos/colors are the same, but rather, the organization of the information.

I'm guessing that this is a template of some kind. Does anyone have any information what the template is? Wordpress? Something else?

posted by dfriedman to computers & internet (12 answers total)

Twitter bootstrap or Zurb foundation
posted by bitdamaged at 7:41 AM on May 9, 2012

It looks like a lot of examples of the 960 Grid System, but I don't think that's the tool they're using... and you're right, that look is everywhere.
posted by activitystory at 7:42 AM on May 9, 2012

Sorry cut and pasteung links sucks on the iPhone but google those terms and it will get you where you're going.
posted by bitdamaged at 7:42 AM on May 9, 2012

I don't think it is a Wordpress site. The CSS files don't follow the typical Wordpress naming conventions.
posted by COD at 7:43 AM on May 9, 2012

It reminds me of what the 37signals website used to look like.
posted by ob1quixote at 7:53 AM on May 9, 2012

In the last six months, I've found myself sitting in a surprising number of meetings where people are talking about redoing the website of their startup/charity/whatever. And what I've heard over and over again is: We want something that looks like one.org.

So, at least in the circles I travel in, that seems to be the archetypal example.
posted by 256 at 7:57 AM on May 9, 2012

It's possible that Atlassian is the source of this particular template via their work with Confluence and Jira integration. From the source of your example, it looks like it refers to confluence for theming if that helps.
posted by samsara at 8:14 AM on May 9, 2012

Although that one in particular is not a Wordpress site, there are a TON of Wordpress templates that adhere to that very same look/feel, which might explain why you see it so many places. I'm with ob1quixote, I too think the style originated with 37signals.
posted by jbickers at 8:17 AM on May 9, 2012

You're right that this presentation is everywhere. All three marketing sites for the company I work for look roughly like this, which the header w/ logo and links, carousel of featured content, and then columns under that with details. Ours were all individually custom-built, so I don't think there's any reason to assume it's common because it's a template. I think it's probably just a fairly attractive and effective presentation, with a lot of room for customizations. As I designer, it's a pretty effective hammer, and a lot of marketing sites look a lot like nails.

My gut says that 37signals was the start of the trend, but I really don't know. They're certainly an iconic example of it, and I've frequently heard clients describe what they want in terms of 37signals' design. However, I work in Rails web dev, so there might be more consciousness of 37signals than there is elsewhere.
posted by duien at 8:37 AM on May 9, 2012

Yeah it's a style that's become popular of late. Atl's not using the responsive degrade-to-mobile approach that collapses columns as you resize but that's part of the push; for a lot of informational pages like that it works well to write it once and let the page reflow as you narrow it down. They could switch to that with a very minor edit, thus a big plus in this sort of thing.

As said above, that's one of the things built into Bootstrap. Atl's is based on the Yahoo toolset but tomato tomatoe.
posted by phearlez at 11:06 AM on May 9, 2012

Not an answer, but: I swear this question was asked before! I can't find it though :(
posted by theRussian at 12:59 PM on May 9, 2012

It's not really a common template that everyone uses, it's just a popular layout for selling products. ob1quixote is right that 37Signals in particular used this design early-on as they were turning into a prominent and admired startup, and I would guess that their usage of it probably is important in the layout's current popularity.

Here is an early version of this layout from 2006 on 37Signals' website.
posted by !Jim at 6:24 PM on May 9, 2012