Introduction
Squarespace is one of the best Content Management Sites for building a website. If you are looking for a CMS tool that has got minimal maintenance and setup issues, you’ve met your match.
Some of you may still be skeptical about taking your business to the digital world. Let me convince you, E-Commerce is an absolute necessity for your business.
It’s not just CMS tools that are available, there are plenty of other E-Commerce tools your business can benefit from.
With just a domain name and Squarespace subscription, you can design a wonderful website with Squarespace. Let’s get into knowing more about this CMS tool.
Getting to Know Squarespace
Domain Name
So why do we need a Domain Name? Firstly to acquire a domain name, you can either buy it from Squarespace or from a third-party domain registrar. The domain name and your Squarespace account are linked. Registering your domain name with the third-party registrar is always preferable because it is much easier. Besides, they also offer cheaper yet great services.
Pages and Content
Some of the pages that you can include to your site are the About page, Start Here page, Services page, Portfolio page, Services page, Contact, and so on. For all the pages that you are going to include in your site, prepare the apt content for each.
Setting it Up
To begin with, firstly you should sign up with Squarespace. To do this, visit the official site of Squarespace and click on the “Get Started” option. You should fill a short form here and you are all set to begin.
Upon signing up you will be directed to another page to determine the purpose for which you are starting the site. That is if the site is for your business or for your personal use.
Similarly, you should answer other questions like what is the website going to be about, the goal you have set up for attaining through this website, and finally the name for your site. These questions will appear as you move further step by step.
All these questions will personalize your website arrangements.
Once this personalization gets over, you will be taken to the main page where the preview of your website is found. To your left, you can see the settings panel.
Let us now get a closer look into the settings panel.
The List of the Design Settings Available in the Settings Panel
- Logo & Title
- Template
- Style Editor
- Checkout Page Style Editor
- Lock Screen
- Announcement Bar
- Mobile Information Bar
- Squarespace Badge
- Custom CSS
- Advanced
Here is a brief note on each of the options.
Logo and Title
Logo and Title is the option that lets you add the title and tagline as well as a logo to your website. You can simply type the tagline in the respective field. The taglines appear only on the templates that provide a space to the tagline.
When it comes to logos you can upload your logo if you already have it. If you do not pre-own a logo, then this option allows you to create a logo with its free logo maker.
You can choose a logo out of many other logo designs already available in its repository. Or you can make a logo out of texts only. Or choose an image logo. You can see a panel here to your left which provides the icons and elements to suite your logo.
All you have to do is just type the keyword to find the right icon or element. You can even preview how your logo will look on the business cards or any other material used for branding.
But it is to be noted that the logo you make with this particular logo maker can be downloaded in high resolution only if your Squarespace account is upgraded to premium. Do not forget to save the design you have made.
Template
Templates define the frame of your website. There are some pre-defined templates put under categories like Business, Blogs, Musicians, Personal, Portfolios, Restaurants, Wedding. You can find them in the library. You should choose the right style to match your site.
The category of the template actually doesn’t matter. You can always customize a particular template to suit your site. In the end, all that matters is how the template makes your website appear.
So, how do choose the right template?
What are the expected accomplishments with your site? This question clearly gives you an idea of what you want to do with your site or why you wanted to start a website.
Who are you going to target? This will give you clarification on who your potential customers or clients are. This will let your content land in the right hands.
Besides this, the template should be clean, modern, or simple.
If you are keen on finding out the template that a particular website is using, follow the below instructions.
Right-click and go to page source or view source.
You can find <!– This is Squarespace. –> beside the code at the top. This means that the website belongs to Squarespace.
Press Ctrl and the F keys together. Now search for the templated in the page and copy the ID.
As soon as you find the template ID, search for it in the Squarespace template family. You will end up with the template you have been searching for.
Style Editor
With this option, you can customize the fonts, footer, logo position, title color, and many more. The personalization option varies according to the template.
If you are a very good designer, this option might be of awesome use for you. Otherwise, the default templates are themselves made to perfection.
Checkout Page Style Editor
This option allows you to make alterations to the settings on the checkout page. It might help E-commerce websites.
Lock Screen
Some of the pages can be secured with a password. Such pages usually do not show up in the contents but they appear as a lock screen.
Announcement Bar
You can add sticky notes at the top. So some of the significant contents appear obviously to the readers such that they do not miss it out. You can do it by first enabling the announcement bar, adding a message as well as the link you want your visitors to click on.
Mobile Information Bar
This option makes it possible for you to show off the details like email, location, business hours, and phone number at the bottom of the page on the mobile site. You need to go to the business information option to enable the details you want to share on the mobile site.
Squarespace Badge
Squarespace gives a badge to your website to brand it as a Squarespace website. With the Squarespace Badge option, you can either enable or disable the badge as well as alter the position of the badge.
Custom CSS
The Custom CSS option is to let you make changes to your template beyond the basic changes that you can do by default. It is to be noted that the Custom CSS option might also break the template design.
Advanced
There are a lot of new fonts in the Typekit. The Advance option allows you to add those fonts to your Squarespace website. You can also make advanced changes to the template with this option.
That is all about the design setting options. It’s time to upload content now.
Pages
You will find two plus signs. The one that is found near “Top Navigation” will let you create a page as well as add it to the main menu of your website. While the other plus sign will just let you create a new page.
You can choose the second option and once you finish creating the page, you can straight away add it under the “Top Navigation” with the drag and drop option. You can delete the demo pages that are already present.
The Steps
Now give your page a title. Choose a template relevant to the page you are going to create from a lot of pre-made template options.
Click on “Start Editing”. You will be directed to the Squarespace editor where you can enter and edit your content. This page can be added to the main menu as said earlier. But always do not forget to delete the demo pages before adding your freshly created pages to the main menu.
When you hover your cursor to the top of the page, you will find a panel right under the navigation. This panel contains the options to edit and add elements.
On clicking the edit option, you can make edits to that particular page. And on clicking on the plus sign, you can add design elements to that page. The position of the element can be changed with the drag and drop feature.
Uploading Content
To begin with, tap on the name of the desired page you have created.
The editor will appear where you can add your content after deleting the default template content.
If you have anything to do with the navigation title, title, description (makes your content search engine optimized), header image, URL slug, or tracking code, you can make use of the higher-level page settings.
To do this, you can tap on the Settings icon found beside the page name.
If you want to set a particular page as your homepage, click on the Settings icon found beside it and select the “Set as Homepage” button.
Extra Setting to Make a Blog
- Go to the top navigation and then to the blog menu.
- Click on the settings icon.
- You will see a panel with blog settings. Here, you should configure your preferences.
- Tap on the plus icon.
- At the bottom, there is a space to enter the category and the tags relevant to your post.
- Either publish your blog post or save it in drafts for later.
- To make any edits to the blog content or to add any images, click on the “Options” button under the blog menu. With this option, you can also designate the author, make the post a featured one, and many more.
Squarespace Settings
There are three major categories under the Squarespace settings: General, Website, and Commerce.
General
General lets you add all the business details such as the business name, address, contact, tax ID, and many more details to your site.
Commerce
Commerce settings are mostly involved with creating an online store or adding them to your website.
Website
- With Website settings, you can include a short description of your site. Some templates may already have an exclusive space for you to write about your website.
- You can also connect your Squarespace site to the domain you have purchased in this setting.
- If you want to integrate your business email as well as your social media profiles with your site, you can do it here.
- Marketing setting has got an SEO option that aids you to add a short SEO note for your site. This excerpt can be viewed by the users on the result page when they google it.
- And then comes the blogging setting which will make the URL format for your blog post. This setting can also make the AMP version of your blog post to the AMP providers.
- SSL setting lets you decide whether your site comes under the secured version or the insecure one. It is preferred that you choose the secured version.
That is all about the main three settings.
As soon as you have launched the Squarespace website, you should provide an index for it with Google. To do this make a submission of your sitemap in the Google search Console.
Final Words
It might take you a week’s time to create a website and put it in proper shape. The maintenance concerned with updates, security, and hosting will be taken care of by Squarespace itself.
If you are finding it difficult to use Squarespace, there are many other alternate Content Management Tools you can choose according to your needs.
I hope you got what you came here for, now go out there and shine bright!