Building Business Websites with Squarespace 7 - Second Edition: Master the Squarespace platform to build professional websites that boost your businesses

Book ReviewBuilding Business Websites with Squarespace 7 is a great introduction to using Squarespace, especially for someone with no prior Squarespace experience. I found it to be a logical, methodical treatment starting with how to plan a website and create a Squarespace account, and then continuing with a discussion of building the site using templates and Squarespace layout engine. The book also describes Squarespace support for social media and commerce, and it ends with an overview of advanced customization techniques. In addition to explaining how to use the Squarespace software, the author describes why certain tasks are important such as password protecting a page and moving a page into the unlinked section.The book covers version 7 of the Squarespace software and the information seems to be up to date. There are numerous useful web links within the book and all the links that I tried worked. As an extra convenience for the reader, all of the links are collected together in the appendix. The only topic that needs updating is the description of the Squarespace hosting plans. I was concerned to read that personal web accounts are limited to 20 pages, but, in fact, this restriction has been eliminated from current hosting plans.The Squarespace layout software is template driven and choosing a template can be difficult for a new user, since there are dozens of available templates. The book does a very good job explaining the general operating principles that are shared by all the templates and it points out the templates can be grouped into a small number of families that share similar characteristics. The book includes a chart that explains the differences between the families. It still takes time to find the right template, but the book provides a logical framework for this search.The author maintains a companion website for this book. This website, which appears to be built with Squarespace, includes tips and demo web pages not contained in the book. There is also a link to an online version of the template chart, which has been recently updated. The companion website does not have an errata section, though.I purchased the Kindle version of this book and read it on an iPad. The Kindle presentation is very good. There is an index embedded in the text and another index that is accessed via the Kindle pulldown menu. The illustrations are clear and readable as embedded in the text. Double tapping on the illustration brings up the image on a separate page and enables magnification of the image. The pages are formatted for easy reading. Each section starts on a separate page, even if the section only comprises a single paragraph. Although this formatting seemed unusual, it has the effect of forcing the reader to concentrate on each section. Of course, it would not be an eBook without a couple of annoying glitches. The author uses icons to alert the reader to paragraphs that contain special information. Unfortunately, these graphics display on top of the paragraphs making them hard to read. The chapter titles are displayed in a justified format that results in large amounts of white space between the words, making it uncomfortable to read the titles. All-in-all, these are minor inconveniences.I am happy with my decision to purchase this book to get me up to speed on using Squarespace. The author has done a great job compiling, distilling, and presenting the information. I found it helpful to reread some of the chapters after some hands-on time with the software. There is more information in the book than I could absorb in a single reading. I believe that I will continue referring to the book the future.

Squarespace is big, every template is different, and sorting it all out is daunting. I did quite a bit of research before I bought this book. Read a bunch of Squarespace Help tutorials, read this author's help site and blog, previewed all the templates, and figured out the structure of my site. (I'm a visual artist.) It also helped that I'm good at Photoshop, my work is professionally photographed, and I'd already written much of my supporting materials. And years ago I had a college web design course.So a 400+ page book should have made my simple website showing off my portfolio and promoting my work a piece of cake, right? (No shopping cart, no need to "drive" a bunch of people to my site, no menus within menus.) Oh, so wrong.I can't give the book 5 stars because there are holes that maybe another edition would fix. I'd really like to give it 4 1/2 stars.I'm on my third read of the book right now, and my website is about 10% built. On a positive note:1. I would have never figured out much of how Squarespace works without the book.2. It is very well organized, starts at SquareZero with how to best organize a site, how to choose a template, explains most of the features that one needs to know in order to choose a template.3. It's a good companion to the author's Squarehelp site and her UsingMyHead site.4. Explains in detail the differences between the kinds of pages, the kinds of galleries, all the terminology that makes Squarespace so daunting.But:With a few exceptions, it's not a "how to" and I spend days trying to figure out why certain things weren't working. Be prepared to supplement your reading of the book with a lot of questions asked online to troubleshoot various issues. For example,1. There is no troubleshooting section at all. You have to go online, or go to Squarespace help. e.g. "Edit" didn't work for me at all with the latest version of Safari on the latest Mac OS. Only when I started working in Chrome was I able to get anywhere with editing.2. In some cases the info in this book is at odds with how Squarespace actually works, or there are a couple of simple dope slap points left out.3. There are essential elements completely missing from the book. One example is dealing with Thumbnail images, when they're needed, how and when to use them. Another is the mechanics of creating a menu. Something so obvious and needing some time and attention is given barely a mention. Or you'll follow her advice about folders and it will create a totally unwanted menu result.So it's possible to get quite a ways into creating a site with one template, learn it doesn't work for you, and (too late) learn that your features don't switch to another template. Or want to get rid of something in your template and learn that you can't turn it off. There are a lot of things like this that you have to research on the Squarespace site or online. I don't know how one book could address all these fussy fiddly issues, but I do wish more attention had been given to basic template families and their features.4. I would have liked to have seen more links to other resources, like Squarespace articles.5. There is NO attention given to creating color. There are terms like "banner" and "background" and "canvas", and what those things mean, but how do you control what they look like? If only a couple of templates let you do this, I would have liked to have known this before I began.Having said all that, it's a very valuable resource. I find the author's videos on her website to be much more informative about a couple of topics, and a link to these where appropriate would have been helpful, particularly with regard to blocks and moving them around, and resizing images.It's difficult to write a comprehensive review of a book that's done a respectable job of explaining a daunting topic. I do think the author needs to collect user data from readers at this point, and offer a second edition to clear up the most common points of confusion. There are still some pretty big holes for me, and I'm fairly tech savvy with a simple site.I'd recommend the book, and would definitely buy it again.

This is an excellent book. It's very nicely written and well organized (i.e., easy to read and follow). Prior to trying to launch my new business website, I had zero experience with web design. I know Squarespace is user friendly compared to many other platforms but I was still pretty overwhelmed. This book was a huge help. I read every page and followed all of the steps outlined by the author and I'm pretty happy with the results. Actually, I'm very happy with the result. Of course, it's always a work in progress but not too shabby for my first try (lauraperrotta.com). I highly recommend this book.

I opened a Squarespace account and created a business web site. I got the job done, but I had some difficulty along the way, particularly with uploading text and pictures onto the web page. I purchased this book thinking it would help me with some of those problems. After receiving and looking through the book, I was amazed at what it didn't mention, such as uploading text and pictures, and file formats. I found the book completely useless, so I returned it.

The book is an excellent companion to the website and the links to additional online materials are a bonus. It's probably easier to read in paper format but the ebook works well. (I like to annotate in my own handwriting and I would have to move it out of Kindle to do so.) It is helpful to go through the Squarespace videos, first.

This is a good book on website design in general and Squarespace in particular. However, there is promised a collection of color images of web pages as well as some useful sounding templates to assist you in your website design. But when you navigate to the provided link at the PacktPub website, the files are not available for download.This defect is strictly the fault of the publisher. The author has provided well written content.