SquareSpace

SquareSpace Review

SquareSpace is a blog software that is fully hosted, completely managed environment for creating and maintaining user’s website. SquareSpace is a product of Squarespace, Inc. The software provides solutions for user to build their site, choose their style from name-brand designers, and much more.

User can sign up for 14-day free trial of SquareSpace from this blog software website.

SquareSpace is designed into five packages: Basic, Pro, Advanced, Business, and Community.

• Basic Package is appropriate for individuals just getting started online. This package is great for personal blogs and project websites.
• Pro Package is appropriate for most blogs and small business websites looking for a website on their own custom domain.
• Advanced Package is great for more sophisticated websites requiring multiple editors and more robust site structures.
• Business Package is perfect for all size business websites that need FAQs and data collection functionality.
• Community Package is great for large projects seeking to form communities and connect with their audiences.

SquareSpace has the following features:

Design Highlight Features:

• Templates – Over 60 styles designed by brand name designers.
• Robust Typographic Systems – Automatic conversion of dashes and quotes to high-ascii entities ensures user’s text is beautiful and readable. Automatic MS word formatting stripping for pastes, and more.
• Built for Discerning Developers – Overrides are available for any style on the system, and developers have access to full CSS control.

Site Stureture / Coding Highlight Features:

• Custom Domain Support - Lets user map their domain transparently, ensuring visitors never see a Squarespace domain when viewing user’s site.
• Total Editorial Control – Squarespace does not place advertising on any website , and user is free to monetize their site in any way they want.
• Core Modules – Comes with a robust feature set of modules or building blocks that user can use to create their site with blog, photo gallery, file storage, forum, change tracker, Google Maps, amazon items, etc.
• Rapid, on site Structuring and Page Insertion – All sites are entirely configurable directly from the user interface. Pages can be added and re-arranged by dragging and dropping right on user’s live site.

Blog Module Highlight Features:

• SEO Optimized – All sites include clean article links, proper tagging, and valid XHTML code. All which make user’s site loved by search engines.
• Completely Custom WYSIWYG Editing Interface – Comes with HTML Editor that is designed from the ground up to flawlessly integrate with its environment and give user the control they need.
• Anti-Spam – Comes with integrated distributed anti-spam system blocks over 99.5% of incoming spam.
• Built for Podcasting – Comes with code insertion and video insertion directly from its WYSIWYG interface. Full iTunes tag support.
• Moblogging Support – Post via email support with automatic image resizing.

Photo Gallery Module Highlight Features:

• Many Presentation Options – Lets user show single galleries, groups of galleries, image thumbnails, full images, and more.
• Lightbox Integrated – All galleries come pre-loaded with a lightbox implementation that allows for beautiful full browser sized imagery.
• Hover Effects and Transitions – Multiple lightweight hover and resize effects come standard with every gallery.
• Automatic Image Resizing – User can set parameters to auto-resize images added from their camera.
• Media RSS Built-in – All galleries fully support Media RSS, opening up a world of extensions and presentation options to user’s viewers. Popular plugins like PicLens are fully supported.

Custom Search Engine Highlight Features:

• Accurate, Useful Site Search – Comes with an internal search engine that constantly updates with all changes to user’s site.
• Immediately Updated – Search is updated with user’s site’s content within 15 seconds of any updates.
• Instant Results – Search engine is built on the Apache Lucene core, meaning that user’s search results return in a split second.
• Works with Private Site Areas – Search is fully integrated with its permissions and authentication system. Members can search any area of user’s site they have access to, regardless of if the public can see that area.

Detailed Web Site Analytics Highlight Features:

• Full Statistics System – Lets user monitor their sites visitor counts, including raw, unique, and robot hits.
• Real-time Statistics – Site statistics are computed every 30 seconds, for a real-time view of user’s numbers.
• Beautiful Statistics Display – Contains custom visualization for all of user’s important website traffic.
• RSS Subscriber Tracking – User can track their RSS subscriber numbers without the need for additional plugins.
• Google PageRank Tracking – Supports tracking Google PageRank right from user’s site’s dashboard.
• Referrers and Query Tracking – Lets user know where their visitors are coming from, and what keywords are leading visitors to the website.
• Top Content Tracking – Lets user quickly identify the top performing content on their website.
• Visitor Analysis and Browser Tracking – Lets user track what operating systems and browsers their users are using to visit the site.
• Detailed Visitor Logs – User can see every single click on their website, and what their website visitors are doing minute by minute.
• Website Change Tracking Logs – User can see every change that was made on their website, and who made it.

Data Collection Module

• Form Construction Interface – Comes with completely integrated, 100% drag and drop form construction module, which lets user create forms of any type and collect data from their visitors.
• 15 Field Types – Form builder is incredibly robust, supporting over 15 different data types, such as addresses, currency, emails, and text fields.
• Microsoft Excel Compatible – Form module natively saves user’s submissions to a Microsoft Excel data file, for easy analysis and recording.
• Email Receipts, Email Submissions – Form module can be configured to send out personalized email receipts, as well as report entries directly via email.

Reliability / Architecture Highlight Features:

• Grid Computing – It means that if user’s site gets on CNN — it stays up, no matter the traffic.
• 99.98% Uptime – The system is robust through real world use, not lab testing.
• Pre-Optimized for Traffic – Caching? Partial rendering? Load balancing? Scaling up? It’s all handled. Squarespace sites are on a grid. This is not shared hosting.
• Only Premium Customers – There are no free accounts consuming 99% of the resources for the servers.
• Outstanding Vendors – Squarespace is built with Oracle Coherence, Microsoft SQL Server, Dell hardware, and is hosted at a world class data center in New York City.
• Outstanding Datacenter – Squarespace is hosted at Peer1 Network in New York City, which guarantees 100% uptime to its clients.
• Stable Business Model – Squarespace has been profitable from its first year of existence, and they remain that way.
• Relentless Monitoring – Has over 300 functional checks, monitored at 20 second intervals, with engineers on call should there be an issue with the system.
• IP Access Filters – Gives user fine grained control over who can visit their site, and what IPs are logged while visiting.

Total Data Portability Highlight Features:

• Blog Import - User can import their site from Blogger, Movable Type, Typepad, and Wordpress.
• Blog Export – User can export to Movable Type and XML.
• Site Snapshots – User’s site can be snapshotted to XML, allowing them to move their data anywhere.

Rapid Platform Support Highlight Features:

• Full Support System – The experienced support staff is on call to handle any issues user may have. Issues are always escalated to engineers quickly, and platform engineers are constantly monitoring the support system to ensure perfection.

Flexible Pricing Highlight Features:

• No Contracts – All Squarespace contracts are month to month (with yearly contracts offered at the 10% discount). Cancel at any time from the online interface with no questions asked.
• Change Plans Any Time – User can upgrade or downgrade their plan at any time. Credits are applied automatically for partial months.
• Flexible Pricing – Each package include generous amounts of bandwidth and storage — but more importantly, the bandwidth and storage is actually reliable.

User Experience with SquareSpace Service

To add more useful information for other users, if you ever experience using the SquareSpace program, I encourage you to write a short review about your experience with software and share it in the following section: