More General Page Templates (+ Page Templates) (Request)

Sitely suggestion
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I would say that Sparkle is one of the best website builders I’ve ever used. The documentation is easy to navigate and follow, the software is easy and fun to use. For everything great that Sparkle offers, there is one notable downside: a lack of more general use page templates.

I’d argue that a fair amount of us here use Sparkle in some capacity to create websites for clients, and while the built in page templates may be great for creating personalised websites for ourselves or friends, most clients want something more familiar and professional looking.

I’m aware that one of the main philosophies of Sparkle is to create more unique designs, fully utilising its strengths as a website builder, but more often than not I find going with more general designs help keep clients happy.

While what I’ve discussed in this topic so far has been aimed primarily at Sparkle Pro users, these kinds of templates could even help Sparkle One or Sparkle Basic users explore the program.

I’ll admit, when I first downloaded the Sparkle trial I had no idea what was going on with the templates or how to effectively use them. I actually ended up skipping them altogether at some point to just figure out how the base program worked.

Finally, I’d like to close off this topic with an idea pitch of page templates. I know that you can import pages both on and offline, but I feel as though having a built in page template library would help tremendously with the work I do in Sparkle.

Thank you for reading.

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Hi James,

1st things 1st - Welcome to the community!

Here are some inspiring (not all free) themes (and some extras) from a bunch of great
Sparkle Template Design Warriors!
• Chris Yates ( @Chris ) - sparkle-themes.com
• Selcuk Yilmaz ( @selcuk ) as some excellent themes and extras - visit his site here
• Lucian Dinu ( @luciandesign ) - luciandinu.com
• Flamin’ Fig (@FlaminFig ) - flaminfig.com

Hopefully this will help and inspire you!

To all readers of this topic
if i missed someone please add them to the list

Just one more thing…
As you also mentioned: “…the main philosophies of Sparkle is to create more unique designs…”
And that’s indeed what Duncan hopes we do - to be creative and original!

But than there’s one of Steve Jobs awesome quotes:
“If you have to steal other people’s good ideas to make your own ideas better, steal it.”
Probably inspired on Picasso’s quote:
“Good artists copy, great artists steal”

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Thank you @wolfferine for your pitch! :slight_smile:
I cringed a bit at those quotes though - IP is out of the window!

@James with a bit of work on your end you could create “Sparkle blocks” which would mimic what you have in mind. These “Sparkle blocks” would be in a template project file and when you need them you would drag the block (depending how you want to do it) or copy and paste it inline into your project allowing you to build out your website pages.

For me I know that would save a lot of time but then I feel I would become lazy and all of my project websites would start to look and feel similar which is the reason behind why I love using Sparkle - individuality! :slight_smile:

For me creating all these client projects (under greenskin.media) and seeing their needs and how I can use Sparkle to achieve them has given me a lot of scope in how to present our Flamin’ Fig templates!!! :slight_smile:

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Hi @James, many thanks for the thoughtful request.

While we do have ideas on where Sparkle should go in this context (i.e. future plans), essentially the Wordpress template ecosystem is where you want to go if you want to let clients pick and choose and give them a website a few short hours later.

Seriously, Wordpress sucks and all that, but you can’t beat that!

While the built-in templates are more playful than the average corporate site can bear, the “familiar looking” thing is the problem.

Taken to the extreme, what that argument implies is Sparkle should clone Wordpress feature by feature, because the client expects this.

I think there is a huge opportunity to:

  1. do something more creative
  2. educate the client
  3. build something uniquely fitting for the client (and maybe not as boring!)
  4. contribute to a more lively, diverse and interesting world wide web

Likely also a harder sell and a deal breaker.

But you can also build your own library of “familiar” (i.e. wordpress or bootstrap-like) components, like @FlaminFig says, so you bang out a site quickly by adding sections of a page via copy/paste. With a correct/opinionated setup you can have them already be multi-device.

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Also relevant:

This blog post was more about clickbait than templates, but it’s the same argument.

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@duncan, very very very wise words!!!

I just recently had the potential to take a hacked and dysfunctional WordPress site and convert it into a unique Sparkle website with personalised client-flows and secure page subscription. In laying it all out for the client you could see the “red flags” go up in their eyes. They just saw it all as too much work and why can’t I just hit buttons and automate.

In the end (and they got excited) I suggested to hook up with a WordPress hosting maintenance company and they will look after all the hacked mis-functioning of their website and wished them good luck!..

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Firstly, I’d like to thank everyone that responded to this post. This is a very welcoming community and you are all great examples of it.

Secondly, @duncan I think I may have slightly misrepresented what I intended to convey in my message, sorry about that. When I speak of general page templates, I refer to the same kind of one page starter templates that already exist but with more traditional navigation bars, hero elements and perhaps feature cards. Somewhat of a more barebones, one page template that’s more of just a starting point than anything.

I would absolutely not want Sparkle to copy Wordpress feature by feature (seriously, community plugins are an absolute nightmare to manage over time). Sparkle is an absolute powerhouse in its field. I would, however say that there is at least one Wordpress feature that Sparkle could benefit from: more access or visibility to community templates. @wolfferine Listed quite a few helpful links (thank you for those, Wolfferine) that I would have otherwise been forced to search for myself, with no promise of finding and verifying them all.

People use Sparkle for a range of different reasons, it attracts both business oriented people and designers alike. A friend of mine looking to create only conventional looking websites for clients is looking to purchase Sparkle at the moment, ironically enough.

If what I suggest were to ever get implemented, perhaps you could assign categories to the templates to help them search for what they need.

When I speak of the built-in importable page templates at the bottom of my original post, that’s more an idea I’d imagine would be implemented quite a bit later in to Sparkle’s journey to becoming Sparkle 5.

Finally, thank you Greenskin (I’d have mentioned you, but I can only mention two users because I’m new to the forum) for the tips, I’ll make sure to keep them in mind. In regards to the quote:

There is certainly a fine line to tread when balancing efficiency with potential reliance on standard design, which is why developing a good design philosophy is essential in this field.

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James, (and all readers)

i (personally - imho) think the community could profit / benefit of sharing “general” templates

Again, quoting Picasso :
"Good artists copy, great artists steal”

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Yes please, as a non-techie Wordpress to Sparkle convert (I’ve designed 3 sites far), it would be a bonus to have more theme templates, preferably free, great idea!

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We need some interesting and/or standard blog templates.

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I’m completely new to Sitely, having purchased it a week or two back. My need is to re-create a new site for myself where I can provide a “gallery” of my apps. My existing site was built on Wordpress what feels like eons ago. And it shows.

Really impressed that I could just import the existing site, but that really isn’t what I wanted to do.

I’ve played around a little today with the templates I could find, and by “generating” a site using a couple of prompts, but the results are always far far more complex than what is needed, and really feel a bit creepy (fake “I love this…” messages from Sara, stock images of little kids, etc).

I was a little surprised at the lack of an obvious template marketplace, or community. Sitely clearly loves the concept of a template, so some way to find templates, see how they present, etc would be terrific.

Right now, having read this thread it sounds like what I need to do is create a page for one app and then (somehow), save that as a template that I can then just copy-paste for each of my apps. Then bring them together with some sort of gallery page on top. Again, being able to easily find a template or tool to do this would be great. I’m not a web-dev; (hence my use of Wordpress in the past), and my expertise in this area is very limited, so I really wanted this process to be “easy”.

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I know… easy is the word, but in reality it isn’t quite that way.
Sitely can allow you to achieve a lot but your time is needed to make it a reality.

There are some of us that have gone the extra step and created templates for Sitely…
• Selcuk Yilmaz ( @selcuk ) as some excellent themes and extras - visit his site here
• Lucian Dinu ( @luciandesign ) - luciandinu.com
• Sparkle templates - https://sparkle-templates.com
• Flamin’ Fig (@FlaminFig ) - flaminfig.com … And me! :slight_smile:

Hope that helps! :slight_smile:

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thank you. I’ve taken a look through all of that and there are some nice templates but not what I need. I think I’ve now got a plan; I just need to work out how to implement it.

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Alway curious to know what the Sitely community is after template wise.
So please let me know what type of template you were looking for… and that goes for everyone else! :slight_smile:

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Hi there, and thanks for asking. Essentially I’m an indie app developer. Back around 2011 I setup a “simple” website using Wordpress and plugin theme that let me provide a “gallery” of app pages. It looked great at the time and was very easy to use.

That page is at www.pkclsoft.com/wp

Now it looks rather dated, and the theme lost support years ago. The website also has to run an outdated version of PHP to keep functioning.

It’s time to refresh, even if with a simpler website. My plan was to create a rough app page template that I could just copy-paste and then fill in the details of each app. then have some sort of landing page that provides a snazzy contemporary gallery to link off to each of those app pages.

I have a feeling it’s something that should be easy to do in Sitely.

Each app page essentially needs:

  • The name
  • A download from the App Store button
  • A panel where I can have a rotating slideshow of screenshots
  • A larger area below that containing the app description, information, etc

I’ve been surprised at the apparent lack of templates, even now in Wordpress for something like this. Perhaps devs are setting up a page per app now…

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What you have shown me link(wise) is very doable in Sitely.

With the sliding images the quickest way would be to take the 4-6 images and drop them onto your Sitely canvas. Sitely will ask you how you would like to display the images and you would choose the Sitely Image Gallery.… this will speed things up…

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