squarespace

I liken these discussions to others common with photography folks:

• Buying chemistry (Xtol, say) vs. custom mixing an Xtol-like developer
• Renting photo software vs. buying software or using freeware
• Buying an assembled computer vs buying computer components and making your own
• Renting drag and drop website templates vs. learning how to do it yourself or freeware

There are many more, and I don't think there are any right or wrong choices above.

John Wolf said:

It would certainly be easier in Squarespace, but since retiring I'm always looking for ways to cut costs, and tumblr is free. I really like the horizontal format with my mostly square images.

John

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John you're getting everything out of that free Tumblr account. It looks great!

I’ve used a provider called Clickpic for several years to create my site. I completely restyled and overhauled it early in 2020. I find it straight forward to use and the templates are easy to edit.

warden said:

....John you're getting everything out of that free Tumblr account. It looks great!

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Thanks, warden. Yes, definitely got my money's worth from tumblr.

I very much enjoy tinkering with the theme, with my limited CSS skill. I'm now trying to add Bootstrap to it.

John

Ralph, I used to be a trainer for Apple and I’ve always told new users that no matter how easy people say something computer-related is, you’re still learning a new language. I’ve been a Squarespace user for about a decade and I switched because I grew tired of looking up the code I needed to change to customize my website and finding what line it was on, etc., etc. And following security updates didn’t interest me. However, you might find the perfect Wordpress template (or Tumblr template, or another service) and never need to make any changes. Or you may find that you love learning HTML and CSS. Or you may start with one service and switch to another as your needs evolve. While Squarespace currently fits my use case I can’t recommend them unreservedly because everyone has different needs and learning styles.

If you’re going to use Squarespace I recommend watching their set-up videos, and their email support is pretty good (though I believe it’s gotten longer with the pandemic).

As someone has observed, these services try to lock you in by not offering an export feature. I write all of my posts in Notes so that they’re resident locally on my iPad (and backed up) and then paste them into my blog. When I was on Wordpress I used Marsedit. If you’re on a PC I’m sure there’s an equivalent app.

I’ve also been using Squarespace’s newsletter service but I don’t think it’s a good value and I’m going to switch to something else.

Have you sketched out what you want your site to look like?

Cheers, James

Andrew Patteson said:

I will agree with John, against the prevailing mood here, and say that I am content with squarespace. I have used them for years now. I am sure I could find something cheaper, especially because I am not using any of the ecommerce modules, but I find it simpler than Wordpress and certainly simpler than coding it myself. I guess I am willing to pay for a clean look and the ease of use (for me). There are a lot of templates that wouldn't make sense for a photo website, but once you find one you like it's pretty straightforward. My website: andrewpatteson.com

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Andrew, I checked your site. Very nice but one question. The pictures are much larger than my screen. Everything is very large. So I have to zoom out to see the whole thing. My Flickr sizes pictures to each person's individual screens, I believe. Is there a way you can set that up with Squarespace?

James Bleifus said:

Ralph, I used to be a trainer for Apple and I’ve always told new users that no matter how easy people say something computer-related is, you’re still learning a new language. I’ve been a Squarespace user for about a decade and I switched because I grew tired of looking up the code I needed to change to customize my website and finding what line it was on, etc., etc. And following security updates didn’t interest me. However, you might find the perfect Wordpress template (or Tumblr template, or another service) and never need to make any changes. Or you may find that you love learning HTML and CSS. Or you may start with one service and switch to another as your needs evolve. While Squarespace currently fits my use case I can’t recommend them unreservedly because everyone has different needs and learning styles.

Click to expand...

James, firstly I've just been reading through your website 'notebooks'. Your points about Point Lobos are interesting as here in the UK (on a smaller scale obviously) getting into the outdoors seems to have become more popular in recent times, particularly during the COVID situation, meaning that often one finds several cars parked up somewhere rather than one or two as might have been the case in the past.

On the main topic of websites. A while ago I spent about 3 months on and off learning or attempting to learn modern web design / development etc., in principle to update my own website. However I found the 'devil is in the details' and went for a WordPress solution in the end circa august 2019. I'm not sure how viable the approach of learning HTML / CSS from a book and then implementing a relatively complex site from scratch with a database, functioning galleries, articles etc. is these days unless already an expert in the field or at least with strong intermediate knowledge of the current paradigms.

Initially I was sceptical of WordPress and similar systems, and do see that they have some disadvantages; however, now I've become more familiar with the interface and functionality, the process of making updates and doing re-works of content seems reasonably efficient.

After years of hand coding html and CSS and then using GoLive and now Dreamweaver I messed around with square space for a friend and found it totally unintuitive. To be fair I might have been asking it to do way more than it is designed to do. Also bear in mind that I often seem to have some sort of dyslexia and things that the majority find simple total confound me and conversely, things that I find simple confound others so I'm probably not the best person to ask. Let's just say that us artistic brains have trouble with "simple as falling off a log" concepts like square space.

Alan Edward Klein said:

Andrew, I checked your site. Very nice but one question. The pictures are much larger than my screen. Everything is very large. So I have to zoom out to see the whole thing. My Flickr sizes pictures to each person's individual screens, I believe. Is there a way you can set that up with Squarespace?

Click to expand...

That is simple, you just have to put something like this into the head section.
This code gets read by a browser so that the image displays as 100% on whatever screen you are viewing it on.

img {max-width: 100%;
height: auto}

markbau said:

That is simple, you just have to put something like this into the head section.
This code gets read by a browser so that the image displays as 100% on whatever screen you are viewing it on.

img {max-width: 100%;
height: auto}

Click to expand...

Could Andrew incorporate that in his Squarespace? What about other web design programs?

Alan Edward Klein said:

Andrew, I checked your site. Very nice but one question. The pictures are much larger than my screen. Everything is very large. So I have to zoom out to see the whole thing. My Flickr sizes pictures to each person's individual screens, I believe. Is there a way you can set that up with Squarespace?

Click to expand...

Thanks for the note, Alan! That is strange, and should not be happening. Avoiding glitches like this is part of the reason I am usually happy to pay for their service... I'd love to figure it out -- do you mind telling me what pages you are seeing this on (I have several different kinds of galleries) and what equipment you are viewing it on? You can PM me, if you'd prefer, so we don't clutter up the thread.

My regular website is just plain HTML. I've tried over the years to find something better but it never made any sense to switch. I've tried redesigning it a few times but in the end simple just works.

For simple automation aside from my regular website I use a program called Koken. I think they are kaput now though. Shame. Maybe it can still be downloaded. Don't know. It was free with themes you paid for if you wanted. It even integrated with Lightroom so you could just upload straight from Lightroom and it took care of all the rest. Pretty nice. I just checked. They stopped development on it. Shame. Glad i still have it installed. You can see what it looked like here- https://www.koken.me

I've used Wordpress before and the problem I have with that is sometimes wonky things happen when you get a pushed update. I think though that for regular people who don't want to code Wordpress fills a niche. There are companies that have themes for Wordpress too specifically for photography.

Squarespace just isn't worth the money if you ask me.

I have been meaning to look into Adobe Portfolio. Don't know anything about it but it could be ok.

Andrew Patteson said:

Thanks for the note, Alan! That is strange, and should not be happening. Avoiding glitches like this is part of the reason I am usually happy to pay for their service... I'd love to figure it out -- do you mind telling me what pages you are seeing this on (I have several different kinds of galleries) and what equipment you are viewing it on? You can PM me, if you'd prefer, so we don't clutter up the thread.

Click to expand...

Let's keep this on the forum so other can learn and/or add their thoughts.

The pictures are larger than my screen which is 1200x1900. I can zoom out to reduce the picture size. But then the lettering fonts are too small. Also, there is no way to flip from one picture to the next. You can scroll the screen down and move the pictures. But there should be a way to just jump from one picture to the next so each picture is shown in complete frame. Maybe I missed something.

PS. This is on my desktop. I'm running windows 10. I didn;t try my cellphone.

Same on my cell phone. Pictures too large except there's no way for me to reduce the size. Scrolling the same; no jumping from one picture to the next. Running Android on Samsung Galaxy 7.

Alan Edward Klein said:

Could Andrew incorporate that in his Squarespace? What about other web design programs?

Click to expand...

I don't know if you can go in and change the code yourself on squarespace. But even if you can't I'd be surprised if there wasn't an option to define the max width 100% on all devices. It's sort of at the heart of making a webpage mobile device friendly.

Hmm, the Kolkata gallery and one other are set up differently, but for most of the rest of them you scroll down to see large square thumbnails of all the photos in the collection, but then can click on one to see the entire image individually, and then click left or right to go to the previous or next image. Is it not doing that for you? Thank you, Alan, for spending the time -- I appreciate it.

Andrew Patteson said:

Hmm, the Kolkata gallery and one other are set up differently, but for most of the rest of them you scroll down to see large square thumbnails of all the photos in the collection, but then can click on one to see the entire image individually, and then click left or right to go to the previous or next image. Is it not doing that for you? Thank you, Alan, for spending the time -- I appreciate it.

Click to expand...

OK, I see what you did. It's a little confusing. Is there any way you can shrink the first page so each gallery doesn't overfill the screen. So they're all the same size and the viewer can easily see the sections. Then put a note on top that says something to the effect: Click on Selected PhotoTo Expand Section. Also, you should revise the two sections that scroll only so all sections work the same. That adds more confusion. Keep it simple for the viewer. If it gets frustrating or confusing, they just give up and move on.

Keep the gallery page simple and easy to operate. Save the aesthetics for the actual photos.

Tom Kershaw said:

James, firstly I've just been reading through your website 'notebooks'. Your points about Point Lobos are interesting as here in the UK (on a smaller scale obviously) getting into the outdoors seems to have become more popular in recent times, particularly during the COVID situation, meaning that often one finds several cars parked up somewhere rather than one or two as might have been the case in the past.

On the main topic of websites. A while ago I spent about 3 months on and off learning or attempting to learn modern web design / development etc., in principle to update my own website. However I found the 'devil is in the details' and went for a WordPress solution in the end circa august 2019. I'm not sure how viable the approach of learning HTML / CSS from a book and then implementing a relatively complex site from scratch with a database, functioning galleries, articles etc. is these days unless already an expert in the field or at least with strong intermediate knowledge of the current paradigms.

Initially I was sceptical of WordPress and similar systems, and do see that they have some disadvantages, however, now I've become more familiar with the interface and functionality, the process of making updates and doing re-works of content seems reasonably efficient.

Click to expand...

Tom, I agree. I think that starting a site from scratch for most of us is tough. Instead, finding a theme that's close to what you want and then customizing it is the best approach. To me, none of these platforms is intuitive, though Squarespace is the one that currently works best for my use case.

Now that I'm happy with my site's design I'm could switch to Wordpress and duplicate the look. But last month I decided to change the color of my site and it just took a few moments using a color picker. And last night I added a gallery, did a quick search to remember how to make a dropdown menu, and knocked it out pretty quickly. It was all drag and drop and adding page titles. I know people using other platforms who've wanted to make design changes to their sites for years and have procrastinated because they're too daunted. Too much friction is deadly.

Conversely, in argument against Squarespace, my gallery grid crops the thumbnails into squares, and then displays the full image once it's clicked on. I could probably change that by researching and inserting code or hiring someone from Fiverr to help me, or by switching to a theme that shows gallery thumbnails at my cropped proportions, but I'm not annoyed enough ... yet. Ideally, Squarespace would give me a choice about how to display gallery thumbnails so that I don't have to code. There are no perfect choices.

For you, Wordpress sounds like the best solution.

BTW, I think that my comment about security updates was mistaken. I think that Wordpress now installs security updates automatically so that you don't have to track them.

Cheers, James

James Bleifus said:

For you, Wordpress sounds like the best solution.

Click to expand...

I'm certainly not planning a move away from WordPress in the near future; despite the fact that I'm making use of a commercial theme from Pixelgrade, the back-end "catalogue" of images and pages has taken some tweaking. I'm thinking about putting up new text content on darkroom and photography topics - I did a have a couple of items in that area on my site to begin with but they didn't really fit in and so were removed, however I now have a much better idea of what works for me.

Alan Edward Klein said:

OK, I see what you did. It's a little confusing. Is there any way you can shrink the first page so each gallery doesn't overfill the screen. So they're all the same size and the viewer can easily see the sections. Then put a note on top that says something to the effect: Click on Selected PhotoTo Expand Section. Also, you should revise the two sections that scroll only so all sections work the same. That adds more confusion. Keep it simple for the viewer. If it gets frustrating or confusing, they just give up and move on.

Click to expand...

Thanks, Alan; you make good points. I will take a look and see if there is any flexibility built in. It looks like James also has the square thumbnail issue you noticed, even though he has a different template.

Andrew Patteson said:

Thanks, Alan; you make good points. I will take a look and see if there is any flexibility built in. It looks like James also has the square thumbnail issue you noticed, even though he has a different template.

Click to expand...

Andrew, sorry I didn’t realize that you and Alan were talking about the same issue. I’m using the Wexley theme and just made a test page and I can get different sized thumbnails if I create a gallery page but not if I use the gallery block. I like to break up thumbnails with full-size images so I think I’m stuck with the square thumbnails from the gallery block.

Cheers, James

Images can be resized when the site is accessed by smaller devices by adding something like this to the css file:

@media only screen and (max-width: 480px) {
.middle {
position: sticky;
}

James Bleifus said:

Ralph, I used to be a trainer for Apple and I’ve always told new users that no matter how easy people say something computer-related is, you’re still learning a new language. I’ve been a Squarespace user for about a decade and I switched because I grew tired of looking up the code I needed to change to customize my website and finding what line it was on, etc., etc. And following security updates didn’t interest me. However, you might find the perfect Wordpress template (or Tumblr template, or another service) and never need to make any changes. Or you may find that you love learning HTML and CSS. Or you may start with one service and switch to another as your needs evolve. While Squarespace currently fits my use case I can’t recommend them unreservedly because everyone has different needs and learning styles.

If you’re going to use Squarespace I recommend watching their set-up videos, and their email support is pretty good (though I believe it’s gotten longer with the pandemic).

As someone has observed, these services try to lock you in by not offering an export feature. I write all of my posts in Notes so that they’re resident locally on my iPad (and backed up) and then paste them into my blog. When I was on Wordpress I used Marsedit. If you’re on a PC I’m sure there’s an equivalent app.

I’ve also been using Squarespace’s newsletter service but I don’t think it’s a good value and I’m going to switch to something else.

Have you sketched out what you want your site to look like?

Cheers, James

Click to expand...

Dear James, I'm on a Mac and have been since 1985. So far, I've found Adobe Muse to be the best solution for me but, I understand , it's no longer supported. I had high hopes for square space that was terribly disappointed.