Weeknotes 26
This week’s post is most about web design and development.
I worked on a Squarespace site. There, I’ve said it ;-)
But seriously, a friend needed help with their site and I was able to help them. Along the way, I discovered that Squarespace is good if you work within its framework. However, anything that is not may need custom work or a “workaround”. Not that the site wouldn’t have looked OK without the workaround. It just wouldn’t have been very optimised for search engines.
Our problem with the site was that, whilst blog posts can be categorised, the actual categories cannot have their own descriptions. So, this means that all blog post “category pages” would have the same heading, description, and banner image. That’s not so great imho. However, the workaround was to create indvidual pages and then pull in the posts from a specific category on each page (using a Summary content block). It’s a bit awkward but works. The category navigation needs to be hard coded and added as a code block with this solution but that won’t be too much of a problem if categories don’t change much.
Many thanks to Katy Carlisle from The Wheel Exists for her advice.
Other comments on Squarespace from my limited experience:
- Very nicely designed themes/templates.
- Easy to edit the site.
- £25/month doesn’t sound too much but is essentially £300/year for “hosting”.
- Some people will like the “everything-in-one-place” approach.
- I’m not sure about buying domain name through Squarespace and I think I would keep that separate.
Note: Squarespace also has a £15/month option which would be OK for some sites
All in all, I can see why Squarespace will be great for some people.
Squarespace wouldn’t be my first choice for my typical clients. However, I may use Squarespace again when:
- A client doesn’t have a very big (upfront) budget
- The site requirements are relatively simple.
- I need to get a site(s) launched very quickly.
Anyway, overall, I learnt a few things and enjoyed working on the site.