Punch Burger Launch

Indianapolis' latest and greatest burger destination. Nom nom nom.

We're thrilled to have partnered with the delicious folks at Punch Burger, Indianapolis' latest burger joint. 

It's not often that I get goosebumps when writing about a website, but these burgers are so incredibly great, that I get the vapors just thinking about them. 

When I got the call from Travis Sealls, Managing Partner of Punch Burger, I knew this site had to be fantastic. More than my love for all things web, food is very important to me.

Soapbox Ahead

My wife and I really are the carryout King & Queen, ordering lots of food from the road. One of the biggest pet-peeves of ours is accessing a restaurant website that just doesn't work on mobile. As the reigning King of Carryout, here are the main points I find to be important when building a restaurant website:

• The restaurant website should be non-flash. No Flash anywhere— ever. period.
• The menu should be quickly available and readable
• The location should be provided to those visitng the restaurant
• The phone number should be immediately visible
• Pictures of the food! —Make me want to taste and covet that food

Squarespace's latest version (V6) was a natural solution for the Punch Burger site. Not only were we able to develop a mobile site for the client, but adding and editing images is a total snap for them going-forward.

Visit Punch Burger. I mean it! Drive there now. (I'll join you.)

Keep the Bots Out

I've seen a few Squarespace users in the forums asking why their "subdomain.squarespace.com" site is indexing on Google, and I even received a comment post on my site asking the same thing. 

You can tell your searchbots where to go, by using a Robots.txt and Sitemap.xml files. I posted this earlier [here].

On almost every site I build, my first step is to keep the searchbots out of the site. Most sites are re-designs, and primarily, I would like to keep the client's visitors from finding a site packed with dummy text (before the client adds their final content) and/or view the development in progress. 

To do this, simply log-into your Squarespace site and go to Website Management - Website Settings - Search/Indexing. Under "Search Engine Perameters" deselect "Allow External Search Engines to Index Site" and "Allow External Search Engines to Archive Site".

Just be sure that when you're ready to launch the site —to check those boxes!

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A Squarespace Podcast!

Announcing the unofficial Squarespace podcast, Content, Structure & Style.

We finally took the plunge and decided to produce our own audio podcast, focused completely on Squarespace & the community surrounding the best web publishing platform on the planet.

We are co-hosts Eric Anderson (Web Designer) & Josh Braaten (SEO practitioner & Squarespace blogger) and yours truly, Alan Houser.

Josh posted an excellent overview of the show on his site. After the jump, be sure to subscribe to the RSS or on iTunes and then follow us on Twitter.

Enjoy the show!

Listen to Episode 101 "The Squarespace Hand-off"

Site Launch: CAST

I'm thrilled to announce our latest project for Cast Communication Design.

Cast wanted a total re-brand (and even a name-change) from their previous Squarespace site, so they came to me to develop the site. I worked directly with another designer and translated design comps into Squarespace-reality. I used almost every trick in my bag, and of-course, learned some new tricks along the way!

One thing I'm particularly proud of is the "give us your email address and we'll give you a download" implementation on Cast's 'Position Papers' page. Give it a try by submitting your email address, and let me know what you think!

Say hello to Cast Communication Design: http://castcommunicationdesign.com

Site Launch: D.A.W.G.S.

I'm happy to announce the launch of dawgsinc.com!

Based in Chicago, DAWGS came to us looking for a re-design of their previous Squarespace site. We were excited to help, and we think they're excited too.

Visit dawgsinc.com and tell them we said hello!

(clicking this image will take you to dawgsinc.com)

D.A.W.G.S. (Door And Window Guard Systems) manufactures, rents and sells attractive steel panels (Door and Window Guards) used to cover door and window openings on vacant buildings, providing security to property owners and neighborhoods from the many problems associated with leaving buildings vacant.