Hi, I'm Khara, an oboist and web designer with 10 years experience in marketing, graphic design, and website design and development. Every month I send Squarespace video tutorials, blog articles, SEO tips, and industry news for website designers and DIY enthusiasts.
Your first Squarespace newsletter!
Hi Reader,
Thank you for joining me on this Squarespace journey! I'm incredibly excited to be diving into these topics with you. Each month I plan on sending a helpful tutorial and/or article, plus the hottest trends and news in the Squarespace community.
Tip of the Month: Creating a Popup on your Squarespace Website
If you have ever wanted a popup on your website for staff bios, a quick contact form, newsletter, Calendly form, or more, this 8-minute video walks you through exactly how to do this! Watch video >>
Articles of the Month
Squarespace Blogging: A Comprehensive Guide
Squarespace is often an overlooked platform for blogging, but competes with WordPress more than you'd think! This article doesn't disappoint—it highlights every built-in blogging feature and then some. Read More >>
Is Squarespace SEO good or bad? (20,000 sites analyzed)
As an [almost] former WordPress developer turned Squarespace fan-girl, this article peaked my interest. There are a lot of benefits to using Squarespace and I believe the platform has tremendous potential. While the article does highlight some areas where Squarespace could improve their SEO, I still feel the platform out-performs WordPress and Wix. Unless you are a programmer and can tackle every piece of code in your WordPress website, I'm starting to find users can get a much better performance and SEO score on Squarespace. Read More >>
Ps... I tested the image upload theory and Squarespace only increased the image size by a few kb. Contrary to the article, I was able to get my images under 100k. However, I had to reduce the dimensions (which isn't always ideal and you don't have to do in a next-gen format such as Webp—which I'm sure Squarespace will support in the future!).
October Industry News
Migration tool for 7.0 websites
If you are still on 7.0, Squarespace is working on a tool that will help you migrate to 7.1. The migration will be limited to the Brine and Bedford templates for now, but it's a start! If you have a complex site, you might want to consider rebuilding a new website. The CEO of Squarespace said they will continue supporting 7.0 indefinitely, but you won't be able to enjoy the new features being released (see below).
The biggest feature release yet!
In the upcoming months Squarespace will be rolling out their biggest update yet. The amount of new features coming out is nothing short of incredible. One of the things I love about Squarespace is the momentum behind the company and their commitment to keeping up with what the community needs.
Read about the Refresh here >>
New free SEO extension called TinyIMG
A new extension has just been added and it looks like something everyone could benefit from. This free SEO extension claims to compress images by 70%, does an audit of your website, identifies missing alt tags and helps suggest new ones, and can create meta descriptions and product descriptions in bulk using AI. Learn more >>
Until next month,
Squarespace Websites for Creatives
Khara Wolf
Hi, I'm Khara, an oboist and web designer with 10 years experience in marketing, graphic design, and website design and development. Every month I send Squarespace video tutorials, blog articles, SEO tips, and industry news for website designers and DIY enthusiasts.
Hi Reader, This is a quick one! I just finished watching the entire Website Designer Summit hosted by Elizabeth Ellery. There are too many highlights to list here—every session was pure gold. The replay is FREE and should be up for another week or so and I highly recommend it for everyone who wants to learn some quality tips from the best in the biz. Watch the Replay ⟶ In other news.... I posted a new blog and video recently addressing the Bandcamp block. New blog & video! How to Embed...
Hi Reader, There are a some new exciting features available in your Squarespace site! You can scroll down to see which ones apply to you. FYI, they also re-arranged the "settings" panel again. Remember, you can always click the "/" (back slash) key to easily search any setting on your website. I started the year off strong with the 5-Days to Ranking on Google challenge with Tonya Lawson. If you are serious about SEO, you need a blog. And if you are serious about blogging, Tonya is the best....
Hi Reader, I apparently finished off 2023 creating way more articles and YouTube videos than I realized! (sorry not sorry?).This week I'm just sending a digest recap: 6 articles and 4 YouTube tutorials. I recommend scanning the titles and diving into anything that interests you. There are some good ones in here! I have some exciting announcements come later this month. In the meantime, I'm back in the office (officially) tomorrow I'd like to wish you all a happy new year. My word for the year...