Search
Wednesday
20May2009

What is a WYSIWYG editor?

Much of the content editing in Squarespace is done via pop-up windows called WYSIWYG editors. WYSIWYG (pronounced wi-zee-wig) is an acronym for What You See Is What You Get. Basically it converts common writing styles into HTML - so you don't have to learn another language to build web content.

Click to read more ...

Thursday
21May2009

How do I edit my site content?

You do the editing for your site directly on your site itself. Start by logging in to your site using the login and password that you created at signup. Your login is the item from the front part of your URL (for example http://<site>.squarespace.com/ would have a login of <site>). After identifying yourself, you will be able to change the content on your site directly by using the gray editing strips that appear throughout your site.

Thursday
21May2009

Can I import entries from another blogging system?

Yes. In the [Data & Media > Blog Importer] section of your website manager you will find an area to import from Movable Type, TypePad, Wordpress and Blogger. The importing tool will also match up authors from your previous blog entries to authors in your Squarespace account based on Display Name.

In addition, we provide specific instructions for importing from different services.

Thursday
21May2009

Can I import entries from RSS?

No. While we initially had an RSS importing function, it was too complex to get most systems to publish enough information to accurately obtain a reasonable Journal from the data. We recommend using a Movable Type export file for transferring data to Squarespace.

Thursday
21May2009

Can I import static HTML pages from Dreamweaver or FrontPage?

Sort of. You can paste content created in these systems into Squarespace Pages from the Architecture area of your site manager, which will be sufficient for most single pages. You will be unable to import an entire site verbatim, because Squarespace operates by managing your content. Tools like Dreamweaver and FrontPage produce pages that have your content organized in no particular fashion, and thus we can not extract the information required to produce the equivalent Squarespace structures.

Thursday
21May2009

How do I update the content on my Squarespace site?

Content updates can be made directly on your website. For instance, clicking "add new entry" from within a journal will pop up a window allowing you to enter the text of a journal entry. To add pictures to a picture gallery, click to "create a new gallery", from your gallery on your front website. From within that gallery, you will be able to upload pictures.

In the case of blogs, you can also use a third-party XML-RPC compatible blog client to update the content of your website.

Thursday
21May2009

When I click save can users immediately see my content?

Yes. You never need to rebuild your Squarespace website, as other services may force you to do. Pushing the save button is your one and only step.

Thursday
21May2009

Must everything on my website be visible to everyone?

 

No. Squarespace gives you advanced tools for managing what users (or specific groups of users) can and cannot see. You have four places where you can limit the content that the public can see:

  1. When creating new content you have the ability to leave that content disabled - disabled content does not show up in your navigation structure and cannot be accessed by users except for you. This feature allows you to create content and spend some time working on the content for it before releasing it to the public.
  2. Journal entries can be either 'draft' or 'published'. While working on a journal entry you can leave in draft status, ensuring that public users cannot view it until you have had time to finish.
  3. Squarespace has an advanced permissions structure allowing you to limit permissions to any part of your site. You can create separate website logins that will allow access to the different portions of your website. For more information please see Members and Audiences.
  4. You may block specific IP addresses, IP address ranges or host names from accessing any part of your site. For more information please see the IP Access Filters tab in your Site Manager.
Thursday
21May2009

What is Textile?

Textile is an editing system developed by Dean Allen that allows you to type in plain text, and have that plain text be automatically converted to XHTML. For example, entering two returns after a group of sentences will enclose that block in <p> tags. Other simple rules apply, which can be viewed by clicking the help button from within your Squarespace editor. Textile is backwards compatible with most simple HTML, allowing you to mix HTML and Textile syntax.

Thursday
21May2009

Is it possible to tell Squarespace to auto-publish my entries on a certain time?

Yes. From the More Options tab (in the lower right) while composing an entry, there is a "Publish On" field that will allow you to specify a date for article publishing. Please note that this field will only be present if the "Published" checkbox is not checked (as you can't set an entry to publish in the future if you've already published it).

Need more help with this? See this short video illustrating the steps.

Thursday
21May2009

How do I add social bookmarking links to my entries?

You can add the share button to add the social bookmarking feature to your entries automatically. In the journal configuration screen, scroll down to the Post Display Configuration section. Click the share element to select this, and drag the element to your active element list to add this to add this to your entries.

Thursday
21May2009

Where do I edit my social profile links?

You can add/edit/remove these from [Website Management > Members & Access > Member Accounts] by clicking the social profile link for the account. When viewing the social profile tab you can add links that don't appear in the list, see this screenshot for more information.

Thursday
21May2009

How do I manage all of my entries from a single location?

Journal Post Management is available from from [Website Management > Dashboard > Manage Posts]. This allows to you interact with all of your journal entries in a database-oriented fashion -- you have to ability to sort all of your entries by all, published, scheduled and drafts, as well as by journal, author, time period, and category/tag.

Thursday
21May2009

How do I post an entry to my blog?

In Squarespace, a Journal represents your blog. You can have more than one blog on your website by adding multiple Journals to your site. To add entries to your blog (and to add any content to your Squarespace site), access the front part of your site, and navigate to the journal page. Click the "A" icon in the upper right corner of your screen to switch to Content Editing mode. In this view you will see the button to "create a new entry". A dialog will open that will allow you to add an entry.

We also have an illustrated guide for adding a journal entry here.

Thursday
21May2009

How do I add a picture to a page or blog entry?

In your website manager, there is a section under Data & Media titled File Storage. This area may be used to keep files and pictures that you don't want the public to list, but you'd like to link to for the public to see. After you place a file in this storage area, you can click the image icon to insert an image in your page. In the image insertion window, navigate to Your Files to select an image from your File Storage. You can also select files you have uploaded in other picture and file areas via this method.

Thursday
21May2009

How do I add an image to my sidebar?

You can add an image to your sidebar by adding a text/HTML widget to your site, using this guide for adding a widget. After you've added and configured your widget, switch to Content Editing mode (click the A icon in the upper right corner of your screen) to add content.

Click the edit section html button for your new widget, and insert your image in the editor using the guide for inserting an image here.

Thursday
21May2009

How do I add photo galleries or pictures to my website?

You can add photos or pictures to your site in galleries by using the Gallery page. Once you've added a gallery to your website, create a gallery within it. After creating a gallery, you will be able to upload pictures to that gallery by clicking on the "Upload Pictures" from within that gallery on your website.

Thursday
21May2009

Can I put music on my web site?

We do not have a facility for adding this automatically, however you can use a service like Divshare or similar. Their service will allow you to upload your audio file to their site, and they'll provide the code to add this directly to your page.

You can embed the audio player to any page of your site that's configured to accept code -- in the WYSIWYG editor click the cog icon and add your code there. You can also add this to your sidebar using the steps outlined in this guide.

Thursday
21May2009

How do I link to Amazon items from Amazon.uk or another localized Amazon?

By setting your country within [Structure > Website Management > Locale] from within your website manager, Squarespace will automatically create links to the Amazon store within your locale.

Thursday
21May2009

Say I have an RSS feed I'd like to display on my site, how can I do this?

Since we don't provide a utility that displays RSS feeds directly, you'll need to locate a tool that converts RSS to JavaScript which you can then embed in your Squarespace website. We like Feeburner's BuzzBoost, if you're having trouble finding one.

To embed the JavaScript code, you'll want to create a new Page, then edit the HTML Code for it (Raw Editing Mode works well here). Just paste the JavaScript generated by the tool into your page, and click Save. The feed should then appear embedded in your website.