A. CasalenaIntegrating Blogs and Websites
I had a discussion with Anthony last week that brought up some very good points about the current state of blogging and the Internet. Blogs have been a great addition to the Internet, but we seem to be getting a case of tunnel vision. Blogging and blogging alone is not the end-all-be-all that many seem to make it out to be.
The important piece that came out of blogging is that everyone can have a website. Programmers and designers are offering tools that the average person can use to create a personal site with no HTML knowledge at all. This idea of simple web publishing is a great lesson we have learned and one that needs to be taken a step further. If blogs can be created for easy access and editing, then why can’t every site be this user friendly? Not everyone’s ideal website that has one main page set up in journal entry style, but many people who need more than this are forced to make due with the blog template or tackle more complicated programming. Why aren’t all website creation options as easy as setting up as a blog?
And that’s just it. It can be integrated and it can be easy. What it takes is for the blogosphere to look around and realize that there’s a big Internet out there that doesn’t revolve around Technorati. When will it be time to take the blinders off and realize that blogs and websites are not two different and competing web set-up options? Both blogs and static pages are important to a healthy website and both can be incorporated in an easy-to-use web design platform.
Reader Comments (23)
If you actually study up on the state of the blogosphere and websites, you'll find that anyone who puts his money where his writing is, understands the point of blogging to attract customers, patrons, publicity....
Investments into new sites have blogs built in, whether it's for commercial ventures, publishing, or for entertainment. I call it a "blogsite."
Kelly Jad'on
http://www.basilandspice.com
#1 In Book Reviews and Author Interviews--Diet, Health, Weight Loss, Fitness, and Nutrition
I would love to make the leap over to a full-fledged website, with a classy intro, options for navigation and interaction, et cetera, but I guess I don't really know how.
I want to stay with Squarespace, and will probably switch over to Squarespace Professional to make my site more of a full-on website, but am worried that once that happens I'll have to mess around with HTML and so forth.
I'd be curious to hear people's thoughts on such a transition, on upgrading in Squarespace, and all these sorts of things. I can check back here for comments, or if anyone has anything they'd like to e-mail me, my address is antarcticsuburbs@yahoo.com.
The addition of the Photo Gallery feature is very useful for us.
The actual blog (web site) gives us an additional communication channel with customers and prospects. Since everybody is pressed for time, there is only a small minority that reads our blog on a regular and ongoing basis.
The blog area gives us an opportunity to disseminate free information and advice http://stradaautostore.squarespace.com/how-to-buy-a-used-auto/ like How to Buy a Used Auto for people to inform and enpower themselves.
We also check our rating on Technorati just to see where we stand, its encouraging to see that we have made progress with our ratings. We are keenly aware that Technorati does not generate business for us, we need to sell cars to generate business.
We are in the car business not the blogging business.
We recommend to integrate web site / blog it works well for us, and more important its very easy to update / change / reconfigure the entire site is dynamic.
One advantage of using a blog, it makes it easy for the search engines (crawlers) to have access to your site/blog.
The statistics that Squarespace makes available are very useful, the stats give a clear indication of what visitors are looking at and how long they stay.
I'm a bit curious as to what you're referring to when you state:
"I would love to make the leap over to a full-fledged website, with a classy intro, options for navigation and interaction, et cetera, but I guess I don't really know how."
What in that statement, aside from the splash screen, is Squarespace not providing currently? The "upgrade" in Squarespace would probably just take the form of adding more pages.
It's possible to create a splash page on Squarespace -- but we make it sort of hard to do because sites are generally better without them (how many times have you actually read a splash screen verus mindlessly clicking through it to get to the actual content?).
So far so good. Squarespace allows me to create a professional-looking website around a small number of blogs, without me having to manually update html etc., every time something new arrives.
http://e-urban.squarespace.com , my website/blogs, are targeting a specific all-european professional group (urban development practicians). Blogging in Europe means addressing your public in two or more languages. By creating four language-categories in the sqsp category system for English, French, German and Dutch, I can easily filter articles on language, using Feedburner (TM) and create pages for visitors looking for articles in their preferred language. I tried the same procedure for the creation of general, one-language, overviews of the whole site and of the different blogs. That proved more difficult and the results do not satisfy me and the other editors.
There is not sufficient space in the sidebar for keeping the reader alert on new content (remember, in four different languages!). Creating a horizontal top-bar is possible, but very complicated. The same is true for a second side-bar, apart from the aesthetic problems connected to that.
From my point of view, the suggestion contained in Jessica Ek's post, boils down to this:
1. A more sophisticated "page" feature with page-widgets for a top- and/or a sidebar;
2. Less constraining "archive"- and "email"- pages/forms (and other, recently announced, form pages);
3. Opening the possibility of RSS-categorical archives through Squarespace, so that we do not have to recur to an external service to do something that is in fact internal to our sites.
If one or more of these suggestions could be realised, we shall continue with all the more pleasure to use Squarespace as our publishing system, combining the advantages of blogging with some useful features of traditional websites!
(* Actually, I recently created another site with Squarespace: http://huibslog.huibs.net/ , where I centralize some of my non - "e-urban" blogging, also in 4 languages. Having experienced the possibilities and limitations of the system, I opted for one of the splendid graphic dressings Squarespace offers, and succeeded in NOT overcrowding the sidebar. I am very happy with it. But a more complicated structure like e-urban really needs some more advanced page-tools!)
I checked out your site and its neat, tidy and cool.
Amongst many free powerful communication and collaboration tools, Google Apps will give you a crowd of email addresses @mystrangenewmexico.com for you and your friends; tell them about your domain here: www.google.com/a
Your SS account has an easily customizable Contact Page you can configure to send to your current email address [or mike@mystrangenewmexico.com soon, eh?]; readers can contact you without firing up an email client or leaving your pages
I'm guessing you have a personal Pro account? which has more than enough at this stage. A little HTML goes a long way on a basic HTML Page, start small. And www.manual.squarespace.com secretly make tricky splash screens sound quite simple.
Respect
--
3Easy
www.bigwednesday.com.au
4 Languages :) We definitely only elegantly support 1.
The future of Squarespace is going to be defined by an escalation in the structuring sophistication. We've got plans for multiple columns, but then also combining that with multiple "tabs" to really facilitate many navigation bar structures within one single site.
As for your 3 points:
1. Noted -- though really complex page design from a web-based editor is quite difficult.
2. Is this the same as #1? I'm not sure how much more flexible we could make email and form modules. Literally every interface string is customizable, with the exception of some fixed titles that will later be addressed when internationalization is properly addressed.
3. Squarespace already has per category RSS feeds -- which are exposed in the XML Feeds tab in the site manager.
Thank you for your effort in adressing my comment!
The issues at hand become, I feel, somewhat "off-topic" in The Blog. But you told me it's not. So, here we go:
You wrote:
"Hey Huib,
4 Languages :) We definitely only elegantly support 1."
- You underestimate here the quality of your system on this point: Squarespace provides us (unintentionally, perhaps, but nevertheless...) with something that I did not yet find in other publishing systems, i.e. the possibility to avoid translating everything three times. Let me explain: Our customers/visitors mostly know more than one of the four e-urban languages, at least passively. That enables us to produce blogs and info-pages by topic, not by language, while they will feel free to react in a language they master actively. With the possibility to filter posts via categorization, we provide them with means to find their way on the site. This is an elegant solution, that big European websites in our professional field do not provide. I am convinced, that this kind of solution of the language problem will also be adopted in other international professional and scientific spheres.
"The future of Squarespace is going to be defined by an escalation in the structuring sophistication. We've got plans for multiple columns, but then also combining that with multiple "tabs" to really facilitate many navigation bar structures within one single site."
OK!
"As for your 3 points:
1. Noted -- though really complex page design from a web-based editor is quite difficult."
But I trust your genius :-)!
"2. Is this the same as #1? I'm not sure how much more flexible we could make email and form modules. Literally every interface string is customizable, with the exception of some fixed titles that will later be addressed when internationalization is properly addressed."
I meant indeed mainly the "fixed titles" in American English. We intend to propose forms for inscription as subscriber or member to our readers, and we would like to have four versions in four languages. I can use a sort of "workaround", of course, locating those forms on another website or with a service like Feedburner or Bloglines. But I would prefer to do this here.
"3. Squarespace already has per category RSS feeds -- which are exposed in the XML Feeds tab in the site manager."
Oh yes, I know! And I use this feature profusely. What I mean, is, that "blog archive" pages only allow presentation by the main- (and the comments-) XML-feed of a blog. I cannot make an archive by my [EN], [FR] or other language category with Squarespace. I have to recur to Feedburner, which is more complicated to set up and presents a risk of service interruption or other errors.
I hope that some confusion has been cleaned up now. It is a pleasure to share my thoughts with you.
Yours,
Huib Riethof, Brussels
However, there are no simple, web-based publishing interfaces that enable a more database-style structure - a leap forward would be to offer a system of working with the content in a non-blog, non-diarised format. A heirarchical or categorised backend (with perhaps multiple category publishing options - i.e. content could be listed by type, by date published, by price, by alphebetical order, by size, by popularity, and so on) would be a Godsend.
What I try to do with Squarespace is fudge the appearance of a structured web site but with a blog backend. It would nice to be offered some of the features of, say, PHP-MySQL style architecture, but without having to learn the programming language to hardcode it oneself.
I guess my main complaint is that mys website still LOOKS like a blog and people still refer to it as a blog. That drives me crazy.
As for the splash screen, I was thinking less of just a basic page that just has to be clicked through and more of an attractive page that easily acts as a guide to every corner of the site--to a current posting, to past installments, to a page of links, to interactive photo galleries, and an area where viewers could post stories of their own (not just comments). There's a lot I'd still like to add.
All that aside, I love Squarespace. I recommend it to everyone. I wouldn't be considering upgrading to professional and asking all these questions if I didn't love it.
Thanks for the complements :) I checked out your site just now -- what do you consider that main area, if not a blog? Incidentally, a set of articles, and a set of blog entries have totally the same structure. An example is Conde Nast's recent publication, Portfolio:
http://www.portfolio.com/
Is that a newspaper, a magazine, or a series of blogs linked together into some catchy landing pages? I'd claim those three share the same backend.
Nice work with TVcream; funny stuff reminiscent of my youth. And great use of the flexibility of the Squarespace model, I agree Squarespace has been as agile as my imagination so far, in almost all cases.
@Mike
You could make your About page the 'front' page. But also bear in mind the 'landing' page of a new visitor may not be the 'front' or 'home' page at all, as has been mentioned.
Horizontal navigation bars aren't that tricky, check out www.manual.squarespace.com for the tips. Maybe hide the 'comment' area, or minimize it. Also learn how to create a landing page.
Personal Advanced may be enough after Personal Pro accounts. Offer editorial to the public, as we have done, with limited publishing ability. Discussion threads don't require a login yet allow visitors to start a brand new thread.
I am still finding new ways to use what we have with the Advanced offering. Happy to share hints and tips. Oh and Mr Casalena, I'd really like 'Category' merging ability, please?
Love it.
Cheers
3Easy
www.bigwednesday.com.au
I have to be honest, I think blogger, wordpress, etc are all great for those that are really tied into that blogging world, but seriously, I think everyone knows that blogs are mostly worthless (aside from the pleasure of writing) and most never even get read. I consider myself pretty open, but blogrolls and all that crap on the sidebar of most blogs, and the navigation is usually impossible to figure out. Seriously, what is the point? Not to mention most layouts are flat out UGLY.
Needless to say, I believe Squarespace has the perfect position and has the best product hands down for any web publishing. Somehow, the system has the ability to let someone like me with no coding education, no web background to publish a professional website and yet has the flexibility to let true coders customize the site a million different ways. It's truly the best of both worlds and a real rare thing to find in the new web.
I think I figured I could have a site up and pay the monthly fees for like 10 years before I broke even by paying someone to make a site for me. With Squarespace, I can change whatever I want in 30 seconds. No call to IT, nothing.
I love Squarespace, and I think most blogging applications can't hold a candle to it.
Anthony, the biggest peeve I've had so far from potential clients is the lack of ability to create a home page in Squarespace that shows an accumulation of content from the entire site in a structured manner. It's one of the reasons I found this post somewhat ironic because yes Squarespace is great for displaying a variety of content but there isn't a way to aggregate this diverse collection of information to give a quick snapshot summary of what's happening across your site.
I mean the link you provided to that portfolio site is a perfect example. There is no way to achieve a structured home page such as that on Squarespace without updating the information on the home page manually everyday, yet a lot of great sites using other CMS solutions make use of these summary home pages extensively to display their site's diverse content dynamically.
Yes, the Change Tracker module can emulate this very basically but in an unstructured way versus the portfolio site you mentioned. There are ways to use RSS javascripts as well to post this information on a home page but again, most of these scripts are tied to a third party service, and most have delays when updating the scripts. Thus you could update your news page and the RSS script on your home page wouldn't update for a few hours at best.
So how best to do this? Not sure but maybe something like an improved Change Tracker module with the following options:
* show content in structured groups (with ability to drag n drop groups for reordering of them)
* ability to display entry excerpts (versus the auto-snippet, thus allowing image thumbnails)
* set one post as "headline" so it displays consistently at top in slightly larger font
* ignore "updates", only show "new" entries (avoids duplicate display of same entry)
* RSS feed (easy for people to subscribe to entire site's content)
BTW I don't want to give the wrong impression here. Squarespace is still the best CMS I've used to date. I think it just needs a few little things to give it the icing on the cake. This summary home page approach is one of them and the ability for selectively displaying sidebar content is another (but it sounds like you're close to achieving that, so that's great).
That "what, aside from X" statement was in response to his 4 points :) There are hundreds of things I want Squarespace to provide in the future.
We're amidst some interesting things involving powering sites for larger companies that are giving us some excellent perspective on how to really structure pages that pull from the rest of the content on one's site. I think keeping within the confines of a change tracker wouldn't be necessarily how we'd do this -- but the general idea of how to highlight articles across a wider set of content is an area we can definitely improve upon.
I mentioned the Conde Nast protfolio site above -- and I think your comments point mainly to the inclusion of features that would further enable a site of that nature (the source content is stored in individual column blogs, and the front page and such are aggregates of that content). I want to enable aggregation modules that can represent the individual news areas of that sort of larger site. That will come with time (we still have multi-tab/multi-column layouts to release :)).
Anthony and his team seem to have an uncanny ability to release updates and enhancements almost in sync with growing demands of the platform. Perhaps that's just a function of listening and responding to feedback from other users on a similar learning curve to me, but so far so good.
I agree that the dichotomy between blog and website is clumsy, much that like that of body and soul, and that a front end which enables one to pool core information energy from within the site and elsewhere would be a most welcomed addition to the existing functionality. This development would ideally also improve one's ability to seamlessly integrate advertising content into the interface. something which the current two column design does not optimally lend itself to.
So keep it up guys and girls - you have the right DNA here to grow into a giant killer, if that's your ambition. Thanks again.
I'm using WordPress as a content-management system (CMS). I have a static home page that contains links to my articles. When/if I switch to SS, I'll want to maintain that structure. See http://www.fitnessintuition.com.
The combination of web site and blog is marvelous. I can have a static article index, arranged as I please (blog software is not good at this), but I can also use comments, RSS, and other features that blog software makes easy. Perfect for a writer who wants his articles to be easily found and read by a "passing crowd."
By the way, along the way, I learned HTML/CSS, and it was the best investment I've ever made. It is not difficult. I recommend those interested do as I did: start by reading Elizabeth Castro's wonderful little book, Creating a Web Page with HTML. It's cheap, it's interesting, and it's a terrific intro. Next, buy and read Head First HTML With CSS and XHTML by Freeman and Freeman. This is the very best "long course" intro there is. It breaks HTML/CSS down into bite-sized chunks.
Finally, if you need a reference for "those times," get a copy of CSS: The Missing Manual.
Why bother learning HTML? Because it gives you huge, huge CONTROL. If you've ever tried to design websites with tables in Dreamweaver, learning HTML will mean that you can stop pulling hair and screaming in agony.
For us footprintsdownunder.com was a way to generate traffic for later launches of commerce sites such as the selling of adventure tours, booking hostel beds etc.
What is a blog and what is a web site, can we define the difference in simple static or live terms. I believe the future is not having a web site or blog, but a combination of both. A web site is a way to sell your products or services how is a blog different from this? With main differences being the updating live RSS feeds etc I believe we are just on the dawn on new internet site technology.
http://www.footprintsadventuretours.com we are turning into a website more or less, as we are displaying the content differently than we would for a simple blog site.
What I am getting at is you can easily have the best of both worlds, you can setup as a blog and display as a blog or setup as a more traditional website and have the blog behind the site as a traffic generating media.
I think any business that decides they need a traditional web site and not a blog are driving out of date cars.
Blogging technology is advancing website creation not replacing it. My thoughts anyway.
Ps. We also look forward to SS developing more, we would love to be able to launch footprintsbookhostel.com on SS but at this time we can not as we need to run a few Java scripts etc to interact with booking databases.
Happy blogging Patrick
There is something cheesy about having the same banner on top of every page (whether it is our own custom banner, or those of Myspace advertisements)...it cuts out a lot of creative options. It would be nice to be able to set different backgrounds for the splash page at least. It would also be nice to be able to have an easy way to implement graphic link buttons, etc.
Just give us an option of plugging in a whole new set of html for our splash page that does not rely on the rest of our sites style, and that would be swell.
Nothing says Blog like "Every page has the same layout." Blogs look like blogs, and nobody reads them unless they are pretty, and even then...It is just like dating...we are visual animals and we are not turned on by businesslike uniformity in layout unless we are involved in boring businesslike uniformity. Nobody really takes the blogosphere seriously, because you can see right through the transparent html, where the author sits at the kitchen table in some Midwest rambler! It all screams, "Amateur!" Blogs are only one click evolved from a message board post. I am speaking in generalities. I have seen a couple nice ones. Mine not included.
First time visitors should have the option of seeing a splash page. First impressions and all. Especially if the site is promoting artwork. What would a comic book be without a cover?
P.S. I am still waiting for the ability to cut and paste link modules. It is impossible to organize long links pages without that feature.
I like the Squarespace platform because it makes it so easy to have a static website and a blog running side by side.
Very interesting comments. I'd like to use sqaurespace as a professional blog for my company. The CMS tool is really good and the editing has been made easy yet powerful. The only two things that really make me hesitate betwwen squarespace and another tool today are :
- languages, i don't reall minde the interace and administration beign in english, but i'd like to call some of the sections or pages etc in French. yit's possible for most of the content but not all.
- navigation : i've just started to look into this but it obvioulsy seems to be tricky, even with HTML knowdlege. i think that this should be much easier in the way that they should be a component called : horizontal navigation, pre made, all css, and that we could edit ? then it'd be just a question of choosing vertical or horizontal navigation.
Apart from that so far i don't see anything tha