Need help getting started with Ionic

Hey guys,

Just getting started with Ionic 1 but I’m running into some speedbumps. Most of the ionic directives don’t seem to be working. I’ve done all the install and setup of boilerplate for ionic and I’m running the development server using ionic serve.
The problem I’m having is that simple examples I’m trying that should work aren’t doing much of anything.
For example, the following code- which should begin to set up a side menu, ends up just showing a blue bar at the top of the screen. All the script tags are there in the html file as per generated by Ionic so I’m not sure why I’m getting this behavior.

<ion-side-menus>
  <ion-pane ion-side-menu-content>
    <ion-nav-bar class="bar-positive nav-title-slide-ios7">
      <ion-nav-back-button class="button-icon"><span class="icon ion-ios7-arrow-left"></span></ion-nav-back-button>
    </ion-nav-bar>
    <ion-nav-view></ion-nav-view>
  </ion-pane>

  <ion-side-menu side="left">
    <ion-header-bar class="bar bar-header bar-dark"></ion-header-bar>
    <ion-content has-header="true">
      <ion-list>
        <ion-item href="#/" menu-close>Home</ion-item>
        <ion-item href="#/about" menu-close>About</ion-item>
      </ion-list>
    </ion-content>
  </ion-side-menu>
  
</ion-side-menus>