I came here to say this as well.

> I’m sick of seeing the same damn buttons. I’m sick of seeing that same damn toolbar up top. It’s driving me crazy.

Take this advice with a grain of salt. As much as I agree with this statement, the fact is, if your audience isn't a group of people familiar with bootstrap, then this probably won't be a problem.

"It's been said here before, but I'm fairly sure the only people "disappointed" and "annoyed" at the many sites using Bootstrap are web developers. Of course we notice UI frameworks because it's our job to create websites."

Are you sure you meant Web Developers? It sounds like you meant Web Designers.

I wouldn't use Bootstrap for any client-facing website, but other agencies I know have tried it and those that work on the lower-end of the client scale have had trouble with clients not wanting to pay when the look of certain elements looks almost exactly like those on other sites they've been to.

Bootstrap is a decent tool, but it has been abused by non-developers and non-designers that cannot develop or design their own pages. It's hardly surprising, and it's a testament to how good Bootstrap can be. However, I hope that Twitter eventually scales back some of Bootstrap to allow people that use it for its intended use to get more out of it.

I've been using Bootstrap more and more for mostly one reason: it's responsive grid. I'm sure there are alternatives, but it required very little effort to find Bootstrap and it does what I need it to do effectively. The other features are a bonus I can choose to use or to leave out.

Most of BS's javascript features need to be loaded separately and if you use LESS, you can scale back a huge chunk of the CSS if you don't plan to use certain CSS features.

It's true that users won't be annoyed by a standard Bootstrap site, and in fact is preferable to many high traffic websites that just look absolutely terrible. The point is, however, that it doesn't give your website/business/product very strong branding if your website looks just like 10 other ones someone has seen. It's not a problem with usability so much as it is with creating something beautiful that actually represents the brand and evokes the right emotions. Stock Bootstrap doesn't do that. Totally fine for blogs, presenting a weekend project, and many other use cases, but there are also many instances when it would be a very poor decision.

Infact the familiarity of seeing a similar site before is a plus to get users comfortable on my site.

If anything - look at WordPress, Tumblr, Indexhibit/Cargo Collective and all of the other sites that rely heavily on themes. Spend a few seconds on Cargo Collective if you haven't and then think about all of the designers' portfolios you've seen that use that exact layout. Only reason you might not notice it off-the-bat is because the content is different and they're usually so minimal you think nothing of it.

Additionally, if you spend any time looking at the uploads to Dribbble, a lot of those layouts look similar to each other regardless of pre-existing templates simply because they needed to get something up fast or they just liked another person's concept so much that they took it and modified it just enough.

That being said, it'd take a few seconds to change that black bar to a brand color to make it look passably different.

A thousand times this.

Normal (i.e. non-artists/designers) don't care. I present Craig's List as exhibit A.

haha possibly :)