It had to be said.
Amen. That’s where our website was before we found the light. It boggles my mind that WordPress is used for anything other than simple blogging.
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Totally agree.
The amount of people who insist on a Wordpress website is staggering.
The amount of people who think a Wordpress website (not blog) is free is even more staggering.
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Wordpress ended up costing me a fortune! I was about to give up or just turn to blogger when I found Sparkle. And with the added blog functionality, I’m all sorted. Thank goodness for Duncan!
@duncan!!! ¡Amen! Eres nuestro Dios, doy fe y creo firmemente en Sparkle como dogma de fe!.
¿WordPress una pesadilla? WP es una tortura, y esto lo dice la que no ha ni intentado instalarlo, solo hice un curso básico, y me pareció algo inviable de utilizar con sentido común, criterio y una economía sana, estable y concreta.
No tengo ni tiempo, ni paciencia, ni quiero adquirir ese tipo de conocimientos y que ocupen espacio en mi cerebro… ¡que cantidad de energía inútil y desperdiciada!
Larga vida a Sparkle 
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That’s a high five from me Duncan!!!
I have had minimal experience with WordPress and in that I found out what a convoluted, complex, conflicted and non-intuitive platform it was! I could NOT DO THAT to my clients! When a client insists they want WordPress I show them politely the door!
WordPress has become the scaffolding for “ALL” and it is promoted like a lying politician by default. The more they tell us the lie the more the non-critical minds will believe it as the truth - far from it!
I also believe that the emerging Web 3.0 will move back to decentralisation and that is where Sparkle will further shine! Something you have total control over instead of the make believe cloud that has been created to disenfranchise the online individual!!!
Doing a little digging and Automattic Inc. is a really really big private company now valued at 7.5Billion that created and owns WordPress and many other applications - Automattic, the parent to WordPress, is a private company you should know about
As of 2021 they have had a funding buyback round - https://ma.tt/2021/08/funding-buyback-hiring/, and one of their new partners is now Black Rock! And if you do not know who Black Rock (and Vanguard for that matter) is prepare to have your mind blown! I have morals and barrack for the humans, Black Rock does not! 
The other thing that 98-99% of the WordPress community don’t know is that their website they built on the opensource GPL license is not theirs because the WordPress software and code created it!
In the end I am also bias, bias towards Sparkle which is totally my goto tool in creating intuitive, well performing individual websites! So thank you Duncan and Daniele in allowing me to swallow the red pill! 
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Okay, i’m going to play the devil’s advocate here.
Both tools are great, although Sparkle being more visual, which is somewhat achievable in WordPress using a good (not Elementor, Divi or Beaver, but something like Oxygen) visual builder.
The advantage of using WordPress with a good builder like Oxygen is to deliver dynamic websites for your clients with custom post types, like car dealerships, woocommerce integration (with various gateways payments which some shops in third world countries depends of) in a scalable way and without the famous bloat that ruins the reputation of the tool, and with a good response time and performance. As we get to this point, that’s what it is: a tool.
Now, I do love Sparkle and everything that it does, it does pretty well. You just can’t, professionally, only use Sparkle, as you need a plethora of tools to fill its gaps. But for the normal user who only wants to put something on the web, it is perfect.
I’m not gonna lie, i was considering getting the developer tools for Sparkle, and still am, while i’ve purchased some LTD for WordPress since projects needs specific solutions, but when I get to ble able to do something like this (with moving divs, transitions and all this sort of stuff) with Sparkle, i’ll permanently change.
If i could rename the blog and the topic title, i’d use “Friends don’t alienate each other”.
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Nah. The context here is building your own site. Yes you can build everything you say with Wordpress, and you know it’s not going to be free. The point is, as is classic with these complex, tech heavy solutions, they lure you in with “oh it’s simple follow this 5 minute tutorial” and you end up buying a ton of specialized tools and crap just to make the thing secure and fast.
Maybe you don’t remember, but the web was always supposed to be a read/write medium, where everybody participates. Today with Wordpress in practice that doesn’t happen, and individual voices are pushed to social media where the point is monetization and not expression. Or they’re mediated by a “standardized tone” of professional copywriting and design. This is extremely harmful to society, where real world diversity is scarcely reflected online.
If I were to rename the blog it would be “Wordpress considered harmful”.
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I really enjoyed reading the article, very informative. Thank you.
for real, most sites don’t need a bloated CMS for sure
So I thought I’d share my thoughts as well. The problem with WordPress sites for me personally is that the add-ons and extensions are always difficult to navigate. For people that see the front end only they don’t realise the mess at the back. Having worked with WooCommerce I have had issues, especially when trying to fix someone else’s mess, and don’t get me started with things like add-ons for the add-ons, having to install one add-ons into WooCommerce simply to convert the currency from one country to the next is a nightmare. And this is the problem, even though something like WooCommerce is made to be used in WordPress it’s still it’s own product, so you technically have to install a product that helps run the other product and if you need more flexibility you need to install an add-on to get it all to work. I’m no expert but life shouldn’t have to be this complicated. If you are selling me a product for sales on a site you should have to take into account that my shoppers might not be in the same location as me, so I shouldn’t be scrolling through endless sites to try and find an extension to help me overcome what you lack. And with online shopfronts popping up all over the place it does make it easier, to me that is what sells Sparkle, the fact that I can make my site look nice and if I need a storefront I embed one where I’d like it and not worry about all the complicated back end stuff, all I need is an account with one of these shopfronts and the setup is pretty easy from there on in.
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And yet another reason to become a Sparkler
Many thanks for all the hard work Duncan. Kudos to you and all involved!
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