Squarespace - It could be worth it
Like anyone I’m interested in ‘ease of use’ when it comes to the online blogging and publishing arena. Oh and give me the ability to make it ‘my space’ not a poorly constructed corporate template. The newly launched ‘SquareSpace‘ could answer many of the issues of simplicity in online publishing with this new release. Take a trip through the demo and be impressed at the realtime editing of styles, format and look that can be driven into your site. The demo indicates developers will be able to integrate CSS styles but is it the "be all and end all" of a solution for those who want to maintain content control.
While a 14 day free trial version is available (without credit card details) the real test for me won’t be in ease of use, but rather control. The monthly pricing start at USD$7 for 0.5GB of storage 6GB of bandwidth. You would agree its quite expensive for what you get in terms of ’storage’ but you are obviously paying for the ‘smarts‘. My concern is that the ’smarts’ are only a little further down the track than other online publishing options and may not be worth the long term cost.
We all move through technology steps, yesterday some HTML site in ‘Hotdog‘, today Wordpress or Blogger and tomorrow!? Well thats another story. Will Squarespace be there and if not how do I move my content? Like any managed service the promise needs to be backed up by keeping our precious thoughts close to our chest in the sense of BACKING UP your content at HOME!
Build a Website - Create a Blog - Squarespace
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Comments
Just to comment on your concerns, we pride ourselves on creating website tools that are not skin-deep. Everything you see from the blogging tools to the photo galleries to the templates are fully featured and completely customizable. And our interface makes accessing that flexibility fast and painless. One of our goals was to be able to recreate almost any website on the web using our tools. I hope you will take a chance and try them out yourself.
And yes you can take your data with you. If you ever do decide to leave you can snapshot all your data and download it into a file to take with you.
Thanks Davin for your response and the clarification on the key points. Your goals and from what I have seen achieved thus far, your results, are admirable. I agree the proof is in the pudding and Squarespace has all the promise so for anyone wanting to test the water a trial is definitely encouraged.
I would however encourage you to extend the trial period from 14 days to 30. My expectation in our ‘time-poor’ world is that people sign-up, intend to dive in and try the system but suddenly find they’re at the end of the trial period having not achieved anything worth assessing so they walk away. This becomes no reflection on the product, only a lack of time to make, own and reflect on the trial.
All the best!
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