Squarespace.com was my first evaluation of a low cost, point and click solution for new bloggers.
I allowed myself two hours with the goal of creating a blog with images, video, affiliate links and then perform some search engine optimization
Evaluation of Squarespace
I started with the Squarespace video presentation on th home page and this provided a brief but cogent introduction to the benefits and features of the product. So far so good.
Next was the fifteen minute demonstration video. This was less engaging so I abandoned this half way through feeling that I had enough to get going.
Now I had to choose a topic for my blog. The snoring of my dogs under the table was the inspiration I needed so I bought the domain cavalier-king-charles-spaniels.com at joker.com and then signed up to Squarespace with a login name of cavalier-king-charles as there was a length restriction on the name.
This is what the blog contains:
- first blog post with text, pictures and embedded video
- about me page with pictures
- picture gallery
- an RSS feed
- site search facility
- product recommendations with affiliate links to a Amazon and Dog online
I then did the DNS set up of http://www.cavalier-king-charles-spaniels.com to point at http://cavalier-king-charles.squarespace.com
The end product looked like this….
Positives about Squarespace
- Very good documentation
- Intuitive user interface
- Main facilities are right out of the box
Negatives about Squarespace
- Site was slow – in fact all squarespace sites were quite slow – even the ones they recommend on their home page
- Editing of large images was unreliable, – small images were okay
- It was not obvious how to change meta data for search engine optimization, i.e. title tags, description and keywords.
- Creating of book recommendation link to Amazon did not work – this might be because I was using an evaluation version – free 14 day trial.
Squarespace Tips
- Edit your images locally on your PC first to make them approximately the right size before uploading them to Squarespace for inclusion on a page
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