Squarespace is not the only website builder/CMS on the market; you may have heard of or considered using similar web-based tools such as Wix, Weebly, or Jimdo. You may have also compared Squarespace to more traditionally installed CMSes, such as WordPress, Drupal, or Joomla. In terms of power, flexibility, functionality, and ease, Squarespace sits somewhere in between these sets of competing products. For example, it's not as simple as something like Weebly, nor as complex and technical as something like Drupal. I believe that Squarespace offers the perfect balance: something that's very easy to set up, pretty easy to use, highly flexible, and incredibly powerful. You can create something that looks great without having to work too hard, and you have the option of digging deeper and applying advanced customizations if you want to.

Like other web-based tools, you don't have to worry about technical stuff such as servers or performing maintenance upgrades: they seamlessly take care of that for you behind the scenes. Yet, unlike some other web-based tools, Squarespace has been around for over 10 years, has an industry-leading 99.98 percent uptime, and uses multiple servers on the award-winning Peer 1 network to ensure your site's reliability. You also get access to 24/7 support, and for all but the cheapest Squarespace subscription plans, unlimited storage and bandwidth, without "throttling" (delays). This means you won't have to worry about caps on uploading or a slow/inaccessible site if you expect high volumes of traffic. Add to this the many third-party integrations that are available—such as email accounts, social media feeds, credit card processing, email newsletters, and more—and it's easy to see why Squarespace is a solid choice for business websites.

This book is a practical guide to planning, designing, building, launching, and managing a website for your business with Squarespace 7. You will learn how to use all of the Squarespace tools to control the layout, appearance, structure, and functions of your website, starting from the inception stage, all the way to monitoring and managing your site after the launch. More than just a how-to manual to create a website, this book also includes helpful design resources for finding and choosing images, fonts, and logos as well as online marketing advice about things such as increasing your site's visibility in search engines, driving traffic to your website through social media and ensuring your site visitors can perform their objectives quickly and easily.

Whether you've had some previous experience or you've never built a website before, this book leads you through a tried and tested, step-by-step process that is designed to help you create your Squarespace website in the most efficient manner possible. By following the chapters in order, you'll be more likely to launch your website on time with the least amount of hassle.

With the release of Squarespace 7, the company has dramatically boosted the support and online help available, and the user support community is rapidly growing. However, this latest version of Squarespace is a bit more complex than previous versions, and the increased flexibility and power of Squarespace 7 has made things less intuitive in some areas. Even by following Squarespace's training videos or help guides, it's not always clear what is the best method or order to do things, and sometimes, the terminology or techniques can be confusing for "non-techies". This book will guide you through every step of the way, in the right order, clearly explaining the how, why, and the effect of every action you'll perform.

Chapter 1, Setting Up for Success – Your Website Toolkit, introduces the process we'll follow to build your website and gives you advice on planning and gathering the raw materials you'll need for the rest of the book.

Chapter 2, Getting Started with Squarespace, sets up your Squarespace account, configures some basic settings, and takes a tour through the Squarespace system.

Chapter 3, Working with Squarespace Templates, provides an overview of the Squarespace templates and helps you choose the best one for your needs.

Chapter 4, Creating Your Site Framework: Pages, Items, Collections, and Navigation, takes you through the different types of Squarespace pages and containers, enabling you to create an empty shell ready for filling with content.

Chapter 5, Adding, Editing, and Arranging Content in Your Web Pages, talks about Squarespace Blocks and how to use them, and you'll add basic content to the pages you created in the last chapter.

Chapter 6, Using Blocks to Add Functionality, Rich Media, and Special Features, covers the more advanced types of blocks, allowing you to add functions, features, and multimedia to your website.

Chapter 7, Selling Online or Taking Donations with Squarespace Commerce, talks about how to set up and use Squarespace Commerce to create an online shop or manage donations on your website.

Chapter 8, Tailoring Your Site's Look and Feel, shows you how to adjust the aesthetics of your website, such as fonts, colors, and logo, to match your brand and target audience.

Chapter 9, Going Live with Your Website and Driving Traffic to It, performs all the final preflight checks before launching your website and helps you learn how you can use Squarespace features to promote your website through social media.

Chapter 10, Managing Your Squarespace Website, covers how to monitor your website activity with Squarespace Metrics, managing comments, inviting contributors to help you manage your site, and using Squarespace mobile apps to monitor and publish while on the move.

Chapter 11, Moving beyond Standard Squarespace Tools, teaches you how to add code to your site to expand its functions or control its appearance in ways you can't with the standard built-in tools. You'll also learn where to find code, guides, and help from Squarespace, the community of users, or from a professional designer/developer.

Appendix A, Getting Help with Squarespace, provides the list of resources that can be accessed through the Squarespace Help Center.

Appendix B, Squarespace Templates in a Nutshell, contains charts displaying the key features of all of the Squarespace templates.

Appendix C, List of Online Resources Used in This Book, gives a chapter-wise list of online resources used in the book.

This book is for anyone who wants to learn how to use the latest version of Squarespace to create a website from scratch and take it through to go-live. You don't need any prior experience with Squarespace or building websites in general. As everything is done using Squarespace's simple, browser-based interface, you don't need to know how to code HTML or CSS—although any prior experience with these may come in handy if you want to perform advanced customizations. If you have used Squarespace 5 or other website builders/CMSes, this book will help you understand the key differences and teach you how to do things the new Squarespace 7 way, which may be very different from what you are accustomed to.

This book has been written with business users in mind, so the content and steps are designed specifically for websites that will be used to promote, market, or sell products and services. It's suitable for start-ups and sole traders who need to build their own website as well as for marketing, design, IT, or communications staff within organizations that want to use Squarespace to create or move their website, so they can manage it internally without needing to rely on a web designer / editor / producer.

Although professional web designers/developers who want to learn about Squarespace could use this book, it's not pitched at that level. You do not need to have any technical skills beyond basic computing skills such as knowing how to use a web browser, social networking site, or word processor.

In this book, you will find a number of text styles that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles and an explanation of their meaning.

Code words in text, database table names, folder names, filenames, file extensions, pathnames, dummy URLs, user input, and Twitter handles are shown as follows: " For example, if you enter Jane Doe as your name, your site's Squarespace address will be http://jane-doe.squarespace.com."

A block of code is set as follows:

<p> This sentence will appear on a new line, with an empty 
  line space above it.</p>

New terms and important words are shown in bold. Words that you see on the screen, for example, in menus or dialog boxes, appear in the text like this: "Click on SEO to load this section into the side panel."

Feedback from our readers is always welcome. Let us know what you think about this book—what you liked or disliked. Reader feedback is important for us as it helps us develop titles that you will really get the most out of.

To send us general feedback, simply e-mail <[email protected]>, and mention the book's title in the subject of your message.

If there is a topic that you have expertise in and you are interested in either writing or contributing to a book, see our author guide at www.packtpub.com/authors.

Now that you are the proud owner of a Packt book, we have a number of things to help you to get the most from your purchase.