Squarespace

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Squarespace is a content hosting service (paid) that provides services such as blogging and domain hosting.

Squarespace is somewhere between a silo like WordPress.com and a full fledged web hosting service.

How To

IndieAuth with rel-me links

@@ need instructions for SquareSpace V7 @@

Your own domain

• General instructions

Export your data from Squarespace

From Squarespace help, "Exporting your site" (link is js;dr), certain content can be exported in XML for WordPress:

"You can export certain content from your Squarespace site into an .xml file. This is useful if you want to export content to WordPress. Not everything will export, as many features rely on our platform’s JavaScript and CSS."

However, note from the criticism below that this XML export is a proprietary format that requires clean up to import to WordPress.

Individual pages can also be read as JSON:

For example, the page at http://developers.squarespace.com can be read as JSON at http://developers.squarespace.com?format=json and at http://developers.squarespace.com/?format=json-pretty

The JSON responses for Squarespace pages include the HTML rendered text of the body of the page, together with a limited set of metadata.

Friendly

• 2015-03-07 microformats2 and webmention support requested (tweet) by Ashton McAllan

  Hey @squarespace. Any plans to support mf2 and webmentions?

  • Open to it: 2015-03-07: @Squarespacehelp:

    @acegiak Not at this time but we're happy to submit a feature request for this to our developers!

Principles Support

During the 2018 Superbowl, Squarespace had several ads featuring Keanu Reeves that were very supportive of IndieWeb principles:

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WqnhN2Rzaqc - "Make It With Keanu Reeves"

  When passion meets inspiration, an obsession is born. Hold on to this dream and tell the world. All you need is a domain and a website from Squarespace. The world is waiting. Make it.

  • (more quotes needed from the video(s) that advocate specific indieweb principles at least in meaning, if not directly by use of similar language)
  • shown at events/2018-02-07-homebrew-website-club
• ...

Criticism

XML export

At least one person has complained that the XML export does not import easily into WordPress and chose to manually copy/paste pages instead:

"I think I've finished literally copying & pasting 300 pages of my #Squarespace blog to my staging site, and I'm ready to transfer my domain over to Wordpress.Pardon me while I collapse in a corner.#Website #IndieWeb"

@liztai, 2023-02-06

"Super proprietary so their XML export file is literally gibberish when transferred to Wordpress.

Ok, not gibberish but requires massive amounts of clean up. Might as well just copy & paste - it's faster!" @liztai, 2023-02-06

The Squarespace help page also indicates several types of content that won't export:

What content won't export

• Other page types (including album pages, cover pages, index pages, info pages, events pages, portfolio pages, and store pages)
• Content in page-specific headers, footers, and sidebars
• More than one blog page
• Folders
• Audio blocks
• Product blocks
• Video blocks
• Drafts
• Style settings
• Custom CSS

https://support.squarespace.com/hc/en-us/articles/206566687, 2023-02-06

Issues

• The 'gallery' page type is limited and not very customisable. For instance, you can't use it to tell a rich photo story easily tommorris on IRC 2014-12-04

Historical Issues

• Squarespace uses hash-based URLs to link from folder pages to content pages (replicated with both text and gallery pages). Hash(bang) URLs are inherently brittle, add complexity and go against the advice of the W3C. I don't want the "wrong" URL being shared. tommorris on IRC 2014-12-04

Historical Version 6

The following How-tos were for a previous version of SquareSpace and no longer apply.

IndieAuth with rel-me links v6

How to setup Web sign-in on your Squarespace website:

• 2013-08-26 How to set up Web Sign In on your @squarespace website

Multiple Domains v6

• Multiple domains

See Also

• silos
• hosting
• Web sign-in
• http://immanagers.com/web-design/squarespace-template-id-reference-table/
• https://www.squarespace.com/keanu/ - Keanu on Squarespace, site example in Squarespace Superbowl LII ad https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WqnhN2Rzaqc "Pick the right domain name... select a template... choosing photos... tell the world your vision... "
• Criticism: default blogs do not provide an archives link for browsing archives by year / month etc.
• Criticism: default blogs do not come with a search box