Any way to make your own website template?

What is the best way of designing and developing several website templates (HTML/CSS/JS) for a custom CMS?

• We are looking for a super passionate and very talented front-end architect to help us developing the next generation of one of our products. If you know you're the best, then let’s chat. We currently have a custom developed CMS, that has 15 website templates. We are building dozen new templates for it, but before we build them, we want to make sure we will be doing them right. Our CMS is very similar to SquareSpace, Weebly, Webs, etc.. where the users select a base template, a skin (changing colors and images), and are able to customize the content. Our user base is definitely not technology-driven, so we have to make sure that everything we build is super easy to use. As mentioned above, before we start even designing the new templates, we have a few questions that need to be answer, to guarantee that we will do things that are as future proof as possible. Here are our current assumptions, that we want you to pinpoint what is right and especially what is wrong with them - and what we are missing! We will build the templates to be responsive and fluid. Should they be this way? Should they really be fluid between breakpoints? We believe it will be easier to develop using a framework. Questions: do we need a framework? Is there any down sides of using one? Down sides of NOT using one? Do the other CMS tools (SquareSpace, Webs, etc..) use a framework? We chose Twitter Bootstrap as our framework. Is Bootstrap the best framework? What about Foundation? Any other one? We selected the following grid structure to design: 1170px container, 12 65px columns, 30px gutter 970px container, 12 48px columns, 30px gutter 750px container, 12 30px columns, 30px gutter Is this a solid grid? 12 columns are better than 16? We selected the following breakpoints: 1200px, 992px, 768px. Are those good breakpoints? Do we need 992px? Our goal is to be create a template system that is simple, flexible, well documented, scalable, future proof, but that doesn’t required a huge support staff to assist thousands of clients. Also the components should be reusable, everything needs to follow best practices, and it should be easy to create new templates after the structure is setup. I really appreciate your help! Thank you!

• Answer:

  While I love working with Foundation, if you really want a 'fluid' solution, I'd suggest looking at http://webdesign.tutsplus.com/articles/working-with-jeet-an-alternative-responsive-framework--webdesign-11295