A. Stark Place

I will venture to guess that a large portion of the people who read this blog have blogs of their own. It is to these people as well as anyone who plans on blogging in the future that this review is directed.

Like a good number of bloggers, I began my web-publishing life with the help of Blogger. Blogger is a simple and free service that some bloggers consider a bush league solution, but it is the industry standard of blogging services. In a very real way, the more complex and powerful paid services must also compete against Blogger, since it handles relatively simple, personal websites so well that most bloggers won’t want to pay for something better. After all, most users won’t make use of any of the advanced features paid services offer. I should note, too, that some of the most popular personal blogs I know of are published using Blogger, so the notion that successful blogs can’t be produced with a free service is just unwarranted snobbery.

For the more gung-ho of the blogging population, however, as well as for those who just can’t do without advanced features or a more polished interface, a paid service may be worth the extra money. Personally, the more I blogged with Blogger, the more I became aware of it’s weaknesses—for instance, lack of categories, lack of reliability, a clunky interface, and the inability to customise without manually modifying code.

I also wanted to expand my online presence to include some things that aren’t strictly considered blogging. For instance, I was interested in, first, publishing longer articles, and second, publishing them in a monthly edition containing several articles at a time. Short frequent posting is fine, and I will continue to do so, but I also wanted to publish some content more in line with my long term goals as a writer. Furthermore, I wanted a system where all my content didn’t have to exist either as a post, or as an item taking up room in my sidebar. So I put blogging on hold while I searched for a service that would fulfill these needs, and allow me to create a better, more complex website.

I tried most of the common paid services, such as Typepad, Wordpress, MovableType, and ExpressionEngine, and I won’t say too much about them here. (I’m aware that the Wordpress and MovableType software are both free for personal use, but since they require a webhost to use them, and webhosts cost money, I consider them paid services.) Suffice it to say that each of these solutions either fell short in features, had an interface I disliked, or, as is the case with ExpressionEngine, required more expertise in web design than I possess.

Therefore, after a 30 day trial, I signed up with Squarespace. Considering my particular needs, and my almost complete lack of knowledge in writing code, it was the only solution that made sense for me, and thus far I haven’t regretted my decision. And since Squarespace is the right service for me, I’ll now describe a bit of how it works, so you can decide whether it is the right service for you. I’ll concentrate on features an average blogger is likely to use.

Site Structure

If you’re accustomed to a simple one-page blog like my old one, you’ll need to think about your site in an entirely different way in order to fully utilize the Squarespace system. A one-page site is like a car bumper, if you want to add information to it, you look for an open spot that isn’t covered in rust, then paste on that sticker they said you weren’t brave enough to display—you showed them! But with Squarespace you need to think about your site not as a flat chrome canvas but as your own personal content cathedral, or at least your very own mobile home of information. Your site has structure; it has rooms; it has virtual geography. Your sidebar isn’t an ever-bloating list, and an HTML nightmare. Heck no, it’s a directory that leads to each separate room of your online trailer: this one to your smelly bedroom, this one to where the cats hang out, this one to your lava lamp, this one to your bean-bag chair that sits in front of the Sansui stereo you spent six-month’s wages on in 1983, and so on. In other words, each item in your sidebar (in Squarespace they’re called modules) will lead your readers to a new and—knowing you—glorious thing. It could be a static webpage, a photo gallery, a journal, a list of links, or a page that just says “honk if you’re…”

Anyway, this site is a presently a mixture of 39 modules: two journal (or blog) modules, several static HTML pages, pages containing lists of links, Amazon items lists, RSS feeds, archives pages, and a whole schwak of single links and folders. Keep in mind that this is all accessible from the sidebar of every single page on this site, and that my sidebar, nonetheless, takes up very little space. The reason for this compactness is the multi-page structure that Squarespace makes possible. Go ahead, click around in the sidebar and see where it takes you. If all the content accessible from my sidebar was included in my sidebar itself and not in separate pages, I’d be checking myself into the loony bin as soon as I could scroll to the bottom of my page, which would never happen considering the unfortunate truth of human mortality.

Module Structuring System 

Of course, Squarespace isn’t the only publishing tool that can produce complex site structures, but it’s the only tool in which I can produce them, for it’s all done through an intuitive interface that doesn’t force me and my pretty little head to worry about code. Instead, I worry only about whether my site has an intuitive structure. Well, and whether it looks as pretty as my little head, and that brings me to…

Appearance 

The days of hacking my template and crossing my sweaty fingers in the faint hope that my site will view properly are over. In Squarespace, you can choose from a number of templates, just like in Blogger (although they are prettier templates than Blogger’s). Then the fun begins. You can now customise your template by creating a custom style, and selecting one of the various style elements on your website. Want to change your main font, or the color of your background? Just select the corresponding element and pick a new font or color from the menus. The same is true of margin sizes, font sizes, spacing, etc. In fact, other than uploading a custom banner image, which was also easy to do, this site was made to look entirely different than the default template merely by playing around with style customization. After changing any of the elements, the change will instantly show up on your website. Here is what the customization interface looks like:

Style Customization Interface

It is also possible to have as many custom styles as you have time to create, and you can switch between them instantly. It would even be easy enough to create a custom style for each season or month of the year, or even to match each of your large colorful collection of jogging pants and spandex that you wear while blogging.

More

While the ability to create complex website structures and easily customize website features without the need to manually enter code is the main advantage of the Squarespace system, there are other nice touches as well. Here are a few that I found beneficial.

 

Conclusion 

For people who have little or no knowledge of web design, or who just don’t want to bother typing code, and yet want a professional looking website, Squarespace may be the best service available. It isn’t cheap, so if you’re pleased with any of the free services, then blog on. Squarespace also won’t work miracles. If you want a fancy site that doesn’t look like anyone else’s, and content that looks as pretty as it is genius, you’ll still need to put in some serious time. But the Squarespace service is good enough that, compared to the free services and even other paid services, less of your time will be spent tearing your hair out or snapping at your family members. And let’s face it, many of us spend way too much time on our websites, which I see as all the more reason to make that time as efficient and free from grief as possible.

Of course, I can only attest to my personal experiences with the Squarespace service, but I consider its cost more than reasonable considering its many merits. Squarespace has made my online life easier and more enjoyable, and has allowed me to produce better content as well. Therefore, I must recommend giving Squarespace a try.