Getting Started With Squarespace
Squarespace is a great option for people wanting to create their own website, but the initial learning curve can be a little steep. I know that I struggled with it for a while myself. When you know absolutely nothing about the tools you are using, you are bound to struggle.
To get started with Squarespace a year or so ago, I purchased the book Building Business Websites with Squarespace 7 by Miko Coffey, and I read the first six or seven chapters. This book is great, but unfortunately it's now out of date since Squarespace has moved on to version 7.1.
In all honesty, I don’t recommend buying a book. I also don’t think much of the many online tutorials out there. They are long drawn out serial sequences that take too much time to work through, and the ones I’m aware of also cost money. I can’t recommend paying money to be bored to death. The real problem though is not the money, It’s the time it takes to work your way through the whole drawn out process.
For me, I think it’s much better to just bite the bullet and to dig into Squarespace and figure it out. I have worked for a few years writing computer code. Over time I think I must have learned at least a dozen different programming languages. A time or two I did read the book and go through a formal training process. Most of the time though I just rooted around until I found out enough about the language to understand the basics and dove head first into the creation process. In a perfect world it’s not what you would want, but sometimes reality requires more of us and we have to push on through the learning curve and just get it done.
I suspect that many of the people determined to create their own website using Squarespace are entrepreneurs starting a business of their own. Correct me if I’m wrong, isn’t starting a business a tall order and a hell of a challenge. With so much to do, why not just dig in and get it done.
What I’m going to do with the rest of this article is identify some good starting point resources from the Squarespace Help support area intended for the beginner. Nothing too massive. Just kind of what I think is a good way to build a basic foundation of knowledge about the tools and methods of creating a website with Squarespace. And then I’m going to outline what I think is the way you should learn to use Squarespace to build your first website. This is the way I actually figured out Squarespace myself. I really believe the way to learn Squarespace, and a lot of other things for that matter, is to just do it!
Here are the four links I like right now in January of 2021. Keep in mind that a year from now these may not be great resources.
The first one is the no brainer. It’s the top level page for Squarespace Help. There’s a wealth of information here. One really great thing about Squarespace is that they take the time to document what they build.
https://support.squarespace.com/hc/en-us
My next link is to the Getting Started with Squarespace Video Series. I realize many folks like to learn by seeing. That’s what this video series is for. Don’t spend too much time with this. It’s too easy. BTW, if you are building a website on Squarespace in 2021, you are interested in version 7.1 templates.
The third link and my first recommended reading for the beginner is Getting Around Squarespace in the Getting Started Guide. This section contains some foundational information that you will use over and over going forward.
https://support.squarespace.com/hc/en-us/articles/212260078
The next link I’m recommending is the Pages and Content Basics section in the Getting Started Help Guide. The information in the Pages and Content section (menu on the left) of the Getting Started Help Guide will help you with tasks in the Pages section of the Squarespace site builder. This is a place where you will be spending a lot of time, so pay attention.
https://support.squarespace.com/hc/en-us/articles/206795137
Ok, think of the page links above as homework. After a little bit of studying, you should be ready to dig in and start creating pages using Squarespace. I already said that the way to learn to use Squarespace is to, well, use Squarespace. Here’s the gist of how to do that in just a few sentences.
Create a new Squarespace account. This will take about a minute if you have an email address and a password in mind. You start this process by clicking on the Get Started button in the upper right corner of the Squarespace homepage. https://www.squarespace.com/ If you already have a Squarespace account, you may want to create a second account with a different email address for experimenting.
In the account you just created, pick a template you like and create a new trial site. This will walk you through the process of creating a new site. You can skip all but the first couple questions because this is going to be a learning experiment, not a real website.
Now dig into the Pages area of the site you just created. Change text, add a section, change an image, add a page and rename it and add it to the menu, and on and on. This is your opportunity to figure out how everything works. If you get stuck, go back to the Squarespace Help pages and try to figure out how to get it done.
When you start to get a feel for how the Pages area works, dig into the Design area, and for that matter the rest of the areas in the menu on the left of the website builder.
The beauty of what you are doing is that it’s all zero risk. If you break something, and you probably will, you are not in trouble. If you can’t fix the mistake you make, stop for a minute to understand what you did wrong and to learn from it, then delete that trial site and start over with a new trial. You set out to learn how to use the website builder tools, not to create a real site. The few hours you spend now learning how everything works will pay off in multiples later when you're working on your real website project.
When you start to feel confident in your ability to get things done, move on to your real project. First though, clean up the trials sites you created while experimenting and learning. Better to delete them now rather than later when you might have real websites mixed in that would be a disaster to delete by accident.
Lets recap. You should read up a little bit about Squarespace to establish a foundation of knowledge. Next, create an account for experimentation and learn how everything works. Finally, when you are comfortable that you understand how to use all the tools, go ahead and start on your real website project confident that you know what you are doing.
I hope you find some value in this article and that you will come back and tell us about your future successes using Squarespace. I genuinely wish you the best of luck. I know you can do it. That really is the trick. If you can envision yourself succeeding, you ultimately will.
Sam