Beginner’s Squarespace Website Guide

Congratulations!

You now have a new user-friendly and effective Squarespace website! What makes it even sweeter is your new website is really easy for YOU to manage on your own!

Here you will find an overview of the sections within the main navigation of Squarespace and what you need to know about each. There are some very useful tools for you tucked in here along with lots that is on the more technical side of things that you don’t need. I hope to help you develop a lay of the land so that you can manage your website effectively and not worry about the rest!

I will also cover some of the main things that you can easily manage, add, or edit on your own and best practices for doing so. I wouldn’t suggest diving into changing big things that might affect the overall design or flow that we worked so hard to achieve, BUT there are definitely things that you are free to take care of as they come up making your website really efficient to manage. * Queue excitement about not having to call your designer or developer for every tiny little change! *

Things Covered in this Guide

Creating your Squarespace Account
Understanding the Main Navigation
Adding Events to the Calendar
Adding Photos to a Gallery
Promotional Pop-Up Windows
Announcement Bars
Email Campaigns

First things first…

CREATING YOUR SQUARESPACE ACCOUNT

Let’s make sure that you have created your Squarespace account to access the backend of your website. Once your website is completed, I will invite you to be a contributor. You will receive this invitation via email from Squarespace. In the email click the button that says “Accept Invitation” and follow the prompts to create your Squarespace account. For more on accepting a contributor invitation see the step by step guide from Squarespace here. Once you log in using the email and password that you’ve created for your Squarespace account, it’s time to familiarize yourself with the dashboard and main navigation.

Understanding the Main Navigation

The main navigation is found on the left hand side of your screen and has the following sections:

Pages - This is where you will find all of the pages contained on your website and where all of the on page editing and changes to your website takes place. On the left hand side you will see the pages of your website organized into categories: Main Navigation, Secondary Navigation, Footer Navigation, and Not Linked (what is shown here depends on how your site is organized so you may not see all of these.)
Design - This section is where all sitewide design specifics live. You will not need to use this section for any of the simple additions that you might make since these settings have already been chosen. If you have any thoughts or questions about design related edits, please don’t hesitate to contact me.
Commerce - The Commerce section covers all things sales related, which for the most part is only relevant if you have an online shop. However, this is also where payment processors are linked for Donations.
Marketing - Squarespace has several built-in convenient marketing tools including email marketing, promotional pop-up windows, & the announcement bar feature. If you would like assistance with implementing any of these features I am happy to help!
Scheduling - This feature allows you to integrate online scheduling into your website.
Donations - For more information and specifics see Squarespace’s help guide on Managing Donations.
Analytics - Squarespace Analytics can be helpful for insight into your website and for making decisions. For more information on this see Squarespace’s help guide on the Analytics Overview and the Analytics Glossary. Something to keep in mind in regards to data collected: your visits to the website will not be excluded from traffic numbers unless you are logged into your Squarespace account.
Settings - The most important things for you to access and manage here are Permissions, Domain Registration Information, and Billing & Account.
Help - Here you can find anything and everything you would want to know about using Squarespace! If you have a questions or are curious about something this is a great resource.

Things Your Can Manage Easily on Your Own!

Adding New Events

For more information on this see Squarespace's Help Article on Adding Events.

In the left navigation panel click “Pages.”

2. Under the “Not Linked” section select the “Calendar” page.

3. Click on the “+” to create a new event. If you would like to duplicate an existing event, see steps for Duplicating Events below. This is best to do when adding recurring events.

4. In the Event editing window there are only a few things you really need to worry about to keep things simple. I’ve circled them below.

First and foremost, add the content such as the Title and the Description in the “Content” section. This is the section that the window opens on.
Edit the Date and Time of the event.
Add the Location of this event (if applicable).
When finished click “Save & Publish” to make your event live on the website or click “Save” to save as a draft and return to edit and publish later.

DUPLICATING EVENTS

Select “Pages” then “Calendar” from the main navigation. Hover over the event that you would like to duplicate and click “Edit.”

2. In the event editing window click “Duplicate” from the lower panel of options.

3. Squarespace will automatically create a duplicate of the event with all of the same information as the original. Now all that is left is to make a few edits to update for the new event and you’re all set!

Remove the “Copy” phrase from the title and change or adjust if need be.
Change the date to reflect the new date of the event you are creating.
Select “Options” from the top editing bar to update the URL (see the next step).

4. Squarespace will automatically duplicate and generate a unique URL for this event. However, it is best practice to keep these as simple and as clear as possible without long phrases or numbers and letters that don’t make sense. In this case I would just change the word “may” to the month that you are creating a meeting for and remove the numbers and letters at the end of the URL.

5. Once you have updated the event you can “Save & Publish” to make live on the website or “Save” to save as a draft and return to edit later.

Adding Photos to a Gallery

For more information on this see Squarespace's Help Article on Adding Images to Gallery Blocks.

For more information on this see Squarespace's Help Article on Formatting Images for Display on Web Best Practices.

Click on “Edit” in the upper left of the actual website window. This will open up on page editing.

2. Scroll down to the gallery that you would like to add an image to. When hovering over it with your mouse options with appear in the upper right corner of the gallery. Select the first “photo” icon to add and image.

3. In the editing window, however over the “+” to see image options and select “Upload Images.” A window will pop up to select the image from your computer. Before uploading be sure to follow best practices for formatting images for web.

4. Once uploaded you can hover over the images on the left to either select or delete. You can also drag and drop the images on the left to determine their order. Once an image is selected a blue border will appear around it and it will be displayed on the right as well. You now have the option to edit this image. When hovering your cursor over the image on the right you can adjust the focal point of the image by dragging and dropping the small circle that appears on the image. You can also edit the image further by selecting “Image Editor.”

5. When finished click “Close” on the gallery editing window and “Done” and “Save” in the upper left of the window.

Squarespace Marketing

I’ve included guides here for managing some of the built in Squarespace Marketing features that might be helpful to you!