I’m getting ready to rebuild a website that was made in an older version of Expression Engine (it may be stable but it’s a horrible CMS) Anyway, this website is structured so badly that competitors in Google are eating up the leads and his website is using the blog to build service/location pages.
I used Sparkle to import his site and it’s quite intact so I’m just going to start from there.
I haven’t used Sparkle for a client before now but it’s the perfect rapid solution.
But if I were to become incapacitated in any way…
Who could I recommend in advance for a failsafe resource to keep developing the client website ongoing?
Are there recommended designers or developers that I could choose from or recommend my client to choose from so I don’t create a risk to the client by being their only website developer if something took me out of the picture? They should have a backup to me, right? I looked on Fiverr a bit with no results.
I guess what you are doing @davekeys is future proofing, but it would be great getting standard on an island though! Just for a change.
There are a number of great professional Designers here in the forum that loves Sparkle and also creates Sparkle websites for clients, including myself that has gone the extra step and have created templates for Sparkle.
@duncan was going to create a Sparkle Designer hub, so maybe have a chat to him as well.
Good luck in finding the one you feel comfortable with! …
Ultimately Sparkle’s code is fully standard HTML/CSS, so theoretically any web coder will do. But knowing the kind, they’d probably prefer throw everything out and rebuild everything in Wordpress.
While we sort of lost steam on the designer hub @FlaminFig mentions, we will certainly be able to route anybody’s request to a Sparkle designer.
This is not just a theory, sadly our designer community has suffered a terrible loss last year.
What was the loss about? Was it related to Covid or loss of a specific person?
I’ve seen the performance hit with Wordpress compared to Sparkle sites to know that smaller websites and businesses can get things done just fine, in fact better, in Sparkle. I’ve built in Wordpress since 2006 and it always seems overrated. I get it that there are many excellent points and a large ecosystem but for a lot of businesses it’s overkill. They don’t blog, they don’t make changes on the website for themselves but rather call up their “web guy”. It seems like a lot of WP guys are more focused on selling a more expensive website than quickly addressing the needs of many businesses who just don’t fit the WP paradigm. Then there is the probability of WP being hacked in short order if it’s on shared hosting.
Indeed, the number of Sparkle agencies is a challenge that should be addressed, as it’s detrimental to agencies competing with Wordpress. My customers would feel much safer if I could tell them that there’s another agency in Canada that can take over if I were to go out of business. A list of agencies by country would be greatly appreciated. I understand that SPARKLE is more geared towards personal subscriptions, but there are a lot of companies out there who don’t have the time or technical knowledge to develop their own website.
Sounds like you’ve got your hands full with that Expression Engine site! Migrations can be a real pain, especially from older versions.
I’ve been through the wringer with those myself and can totally relate.
Should the need ever arise for a Sparkle developer, I would be happy to step in as I have worked on quite a few sites for clients using Sparkle.
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