title: Customizing Bootstrap CSS template
body: <p>I am just getting started with Bootstrap from Twitter and am wondering what the ‘best practices’ is for customization. I want to develop a system that will take advantage of all the power of a css template (Bootstrap or other), be completely (and easily) modifiable, be sustainable (ie – when the next version of Bootstrap is released from Twitter I don’t have to start over.</p>
  
  <p>For example, I want to add background images to the top navigation. It looks like there are 3 ways to go about this:</p>
  
  <ol>
  <li>Modify the .topbar classes in bootstrap.css . I don’t particularly like this because I will have lots of .topbar items and I don’t necessarily want to modify them all the same way.</li>
  <li>Create new classes with my background images and apply both styles (the new and the bootstrap to my element). This may create style conflicts, which could be avoided by stripping the .topbar class into separate classes and then only using the pieces that are not stepped on by my custom class. Again this requires more work than I think should be necessary and while it is flexible, it won’t allow me to easily update bootstrap.css when Twitter releases the next installment.</li>
  <li>Use variables in .LESS to achieve the customization. Offhand this seems like a good approach but having not used .LESS I have concerns about compiling css on the client and about code sustainability.</li>
  </ol>
  
  <p>Though I am using Bootstrap, this question can be generalized to any css template.  </p>
  
  <p>Thanks in advance for input. </p>