The Limits of Squarespace

Hey friend,

Simple poll, are you Squarespace exclusive or do you build in other platforms?

Squarespace exclusive
I dabble in other platforms

Click an answer, and then you can see how everyone else voted.

I’m a big fan of Squarespace, and I love their product, but I also sometimes grow frustrated with it’s limitations… especially around membership stuff.

I want to be able to offer automatic discounts to members. I want to be able to show personalized content. I want to give each of you quick access to the plugins you’ve purchased, without you needing to save the page password. But I can’t do any of this in Squarespace.

That frustration is what pushed me to build the Will-Myers toolkit— a custom website that lets me add all the things Squarespace can’t. It’s been a huge creative outlet and an exciting challenge.

But building something from scratch takes a lot of time and energy. And the more I work on it, the more I appreciate what Squarespace already gets so right — namely, being a best-in-class CMS that’s fast to build on and dead easy to hand off to clients. So even though Squarespace doesn’t do 100% of what I wish it could do all the time, I’m learning to accept its limits and using it in my projects where it makes sense, and not forcing it when it doesn’t.

I think there’s probably some good relationship advice in here too. Squarespace has its limits and its imperfections, and so do people… unless, like me, you’re married to Ren, who so far has shown neither.

Keep Building,
Will

(final copy edit by my wife, Ren)

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Hard coding any css colors can be problematic because they won't adapt to your section's color theme. In this video I walk you through how I write my CSS so that it will adapt to you and your clients changes.

HSLA > HEX

I don't have many hills I'm willing to die on. But this is one: HSLA > HEX. Now I don't want to get into a big fight about this, but I will. Would love to hear your unreasonably strong opinions on why I’m wrong or why I’m (obviosly) correct.

Community Releases

JSONify
My friend Roland over at SQSMods released a Chrome Extension that helps you grab and create structured JSON data for your product pages.

Custom Fonts in Squarespace
Squarespace has released a way to add custom fonts to your website and it’s awesome. Christy Price & Chris SE both have excellent vidoes on how it works.

A Bonus Episode of Somewhat Useful
Christy and I recorded a BONUS episode of Somewhat Useful on our thoughts and takeaways from this last Circle Day.

Code Curious Membership

Code Curious is my membership for professional Squarespace designers. As a member, you get:

CHROME Extension to access all your code & tools.
20% off all plugins & multi-use licenses
Robo-Will, your AI Squarespace Code Assistant
The Code Catalogue with exclusive access to over 100 copy-and-paste code snippets
A Slack Community for you to engage with other Squarespace Designers
Priority Support on plugins and tutorials

$15 / mo or $150 / yr

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