How Do You Squarespace? Eric Ryan Anderson

Eric Anderson left Texas for New York in 2006 to dive headfirst into the photography world. Clueless about how difficult it would be to break in, Eric lucked out by having a few studios take him in as an intern, and finding a few photographers to assist.

It wasn't until he'd been out of Texas for a few years that he began to fully appreciate his home state. After honing his skills with a camera in New York, he went back home to begin a personal project. He took several weeks to drive around the state, which he needed. "Texas is just mind-blowingly large," he says. He photographed people and places, in order to experience stories he'd grown up with. He documented everything from true cowboys to tech startups, country music to hip hop artists, beaches to mountains. "The trip was incredible," he continues. "It's a project I hope I never stop working on."

With that experience as a benchmark, it's no wonder that Eric likes all of his projects to be with people who share the same vision, and have enough flexibility and creativity to produce great results. "There's nothing better than working with a team that's all on the same page. Those jobs are the ones you crave."

How do you keep the job interesting & challenge yourself?

The photo world is a crazy place these days. With the barriers of entry so low, photographers are flooding the market. At the same time the value for images has decreased. It's a huge conversation I won't get into here, but suffice it to say, I'm just thankful to be working consistently with a camera. I don't have to "spice things up" very often to keep it interesting... being able to shoot a variety of people and places every month keeps this job extremely interesting. The primary challenge for many of us photographers is just keeping our spirits up and having faith that people will continue to appreciate good imagery, even when they're bombarded with it from every angle.

What are your favorite photography tools? Do you ever just miss film?

I shoot a combination of Canon, Hasselblad, Polaroid film and a host of other old cameras. For digital workflow, I'm a huge fan of Photo Mechanic, Lightroom and Photoshop. I don't miss film because I try to still use it as much as I can! It's not as dead as some people think. If anything, I feel like interest in film has made a comeback of sorts.

If you weren't busy behind a camera, what else would you love to do?

If I had a musical bone in my body, I'd play guitar or drums. I studied architecture and finance at school, so odds are I'd be designing houses with my father, who's had his own architecture firm for many years. I'd be totally on board with that.

How long have you been using Squarespace? How did you find us?

Honestly, I don't remember how I found Squarespace! I've been using it for a few years now and can't imagine moving the blog anywhere else...

Why does Squarespace work for you? What's your favorite feature?

I keep it pretty simple on my photo blog, but the intuitiveness and customizability are magnificent. I'm prone to changing things up every few months, and SS makes it so easy. The analytics is really great, the iPhone app is perfect, and the integration with other social media sites has been smooth. As for a favorite feature... definitely the iphone/ipad app!

What's next for you?

Exciting things happening! My lovely wife Amy just started her own Squarespace blog, Parker Etc, about all the things she loves... style, music, home stuff. I'm also moving to a new studio in Manhattan, and hoping for a busy and reasonably cool summer in NYC. 

Where can we find you online?

My portfolio site, www.ericryananderson.com, and my blog, www.ivegotfriends.com.

Meet Squarespace: Christa Collins

Christa Collins is the fearless leader of the Squarespace support team. When you ask one of the 12 team members about their boss, you'll hear about her no-nonsense management style, her sharp problem-solving skills, and a lot about her secret prowess as a ninja. 

When Christa started with Squarespace back in December 2006, she was just the third employee added to the company roster. She had recently gotten into blogging and been introduced to Squarespace through some online communities. She took to the platform instantly, and, as things go, couldn't have had better timing. She was moving across the country and looking for a new job just as Anthony was ready to expand Squarespace's customer support efforts. 

"In those days I worked support by myself." But it's no surprise that she's gone from a one-woman team to running a 13-person department, learning the platform inside and out, in order to deliver a wonderful experience to every customer. "It's been an incredible adventure." Her adventure continues, as this month she relocated her family to New York and joined the entire team here in our SoHo office.

Name: Christa Collins

Job title: Director of Customer Care 

What do you *actually* do every day? I manage a team of incredibly talented support staff.  With support growing as much as it has, there are a lot of things to oversee, from reviewing replies and handling customer issues, to scheduling and training staff.  It really depends on the day, but most of the time I'm evaluating and updating shift coverage, maintaining and editing the Squarespace help guides, creating resources for the support team, and always answering tickets.

What's your favorite thing about working here? Our customers are outstanding! I also love that no two days are ever the same, and I'm constantly learning new things. 

What is your background? I got started in retail management at Nordstrom and Gap, and then made the transition to office work at a law firm.  I worked as a legal secretary for several years, and it was during my maternity leave from the law office that I discovered the blogging world and was introduced to Squarespace. 

Aside from Squarespace, what is your favorite online tool/resource? I can't live without Skitch, and recently discovered Divvy (thanks Tom!). 

Favorite blogs? Not Martha, Dooce, and Julie Ree.  

What were the last 5 songs played on your iPod? "Rabbit Heart (Raise it Up)" by Florence + The Machine, "Find Love" by NLX, "We Used to Wait" by Arcade Fire, "No Signs of Pain" by Azure Ray, "Seether" by Veruca Salt.  

What was the last movie you saw? Let Me In, adapted from the Swedish book Let the Right One In by John Ajvide Lindqvist. 

What do you do for fun outside of Squarespace? I read. A lot. Probably a sickening amount. I'm pretty crafty, so I crochet and knit, but sewing is really my passion.    

Tell me 5 fun facts about yourself. 

• My husband and I have 4 daughters, ranging in ages from 17 months to 12 years old.
• I think spiders are disgusting.
• My thumbs are double-jointed.
• I was born on Mother's Day.
• I can't function without coffee. 

If you could pick one superpower, invisibility or flying, which would you pick? Why? I'd have to say flying, which is funny because I'm scared of heights. But the ability to flit to Cancun at a moment's notice? Superpower indeed.

You can find Christa online on Twitter: @daphne. 

Diving into V6: The Template Development Kit

If you've already signed up to the V6 beta test, hold tight -- no invitations have been sent out yet. We have begun deploying V6 accounts across the company, and we continue to iterate rapidly on the feature set. Over the next few weeks, we'll take a deep dive into some of the features that we've been hard at work on. Today, we'd like to underscore one of the foundational improvements to the core system: the Template Development Kit (TDK). Please keep in mind that the V6 beta will begin with the consumer experience, and we will be releasing the TDK later in the year.

V6's primary goal is to deliver the next generation of templates, and part of being able to deliver that is a complete rewrite of our template engine. The new system is extremely developer friendly. Our team has been hammering on it internally for 6 months ensuring that it has the inherent flexibility that developers want and need. Most importantly, when developing a new template, you only need to implement the parts of the platform that you actually want to use on your site. Therefore, templates can be as small as just a few files.

The core TDK includes:

• Complete Control - You will have control over the entire HTML output of your site right down to the beginning and ending <html> tag.
  
• JSON Everywhere - V6 stores every URL on your site as JSON objects. JSON, or JavaScript Object Notation, is a lightweight text-based open standard designed for data-interchange. This means that your entire data set, just by being hosted on Squarespace, becomes accessible in a structured fashion. In other words, third party developers: go have fun.
  
• Simple Templating Language- V6 templates are written using JSON Template. It is a minimal but powerful templating language that fits naturally with the native JSON output of V6. Template files use simple and readable syntax that is logical and editable by non-programmers.
  
• Smarter CSS - All V6 CSS is processed using LESS CSS. LESS extends CSS with dynamic behavior such as variables, mixins, operations and functions. Variables allow you to specify widely used values in a single place and re-use them. Mixins allow you to embed all the properties of a class into another class by simply including the class name as one of its properties. You can also nest selectors inside other selectors, making inheritance clear. Lastly, operations let you add, subtract, divide and multiply property values and colors, giving you the power to create complex relationships between properties.
  
• Desktop Development - You can edit Squarespace templates using your favorite code editor, right from your local machine. All files and resources are saved locally, and can be synchronized with Squarespace's cloud in a single click. Images will be conditionally uploaded to the server when changes are made, keeping everything speedy during development.
  
• Single Template > Multiple Sites - Templates can be synchronized with a master site, then installed on multiple client sites. You can now update a single site and push changes to any number of sub-sites automatically with a single click.
  
• Automatic Fonts - Need to use a Google font? Just use it. Squarespace automatically parses all CSS stylesheets and generates the appropriate headers to pull the fonts you use from Google's font directory. No coding required.
  

Our main point in discussing the template development kit is to underscore the thought and and amount of work that has gone into the fundamentals of the system from a developer perspective. By revamping our core, we are able to create things that were simply not possible to create using the our prior system.

Haven't joined the V6 beta list yet? Sign up below...

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New Templates for All

We're pleased to offer our customers two new templates to choose from. You may have already stumbled across the New Amsterdam template, which was released a couple of months ago. Today we added another great selection for you: Canopy.

While many V5 features have been added since the original templates were first created, New Amsterdam and Canopy offer further enhancements. "The majority of my time is spent developing in V6 and it pains me that our community has to wait for these great experiences," says Senior Designer Krystyn Heide. "So I was itching to design something in V5. These new templates are built to be ready to use right out of the box, with a little more than you might expect from our current style offerings." 

New Amsterdam was created with an eye toward small business owners and the professional websites they need. It has six color variations, each designed to give businesses a versatile color palette to showcase their own logos against.  

Canopy, on the other hand, is geared toward bloggers. With five style variations, this blog-centric template is spare in design with just a touch of color. The minimalistic approach is meant to really let bloggers showcase their content as beautifully as possible. 

If you'd like to try out one of these new templates but need a little help switching over, watch this video tutorial on template switching. 

Enjoy!

New York Dribbble Meetup

Dribbble is our morning cup of coffee.

Each day our design team pokes through Dribbble, sharing beautiful shots with each other, finding inspiration in UX elements, iconography, print layouts, 3D design and more. We love Dribbble for the instant feedback we receive on our work, for the always enthusiastic community of designers, and for the powerful interface and experience.

What's more, Dribbble is a wonderful place to identify unique talent. We're incredibly lucky to be adding three new members to our design team this summer, all of whom we discovered on Dribbble.

Here at Squarespace design and technology are given equal weighting. Respecting design is core to our culture, so hosting the NYC Dribbble Meetups couldn't make us happier. The more designers we all can reach and interact with, the better each of us becomes.

We are thrilled to host the first NYC Dribbble Meetup on Wednesday, June 15th at 7PM. Please join us for an evening of networking, demos & showcases, and refreshments. RSVP here so that we'll know how many new friends to expect, and be sure to drop us a line if you'd like to be added to the demo list. We are located at 459 Broadway (entrance on Grand Street behind the drug store), on the 5th Floor.

We look forward to meeting you! In the meantime, check out our team on Dribbble here, here, here, here, and here.