Drag, Drop, Insert and Row

If you're moving content around in Squarespace 6, you may get a little confused/frustrated. We've probably all been there, and here's one tip that will probably help you.

I will go into greater detail on the Content Editor soon, because there's actually some important milestones (AHA-MOMENTS) to learn before arriving at this one.

But here you go— here's the short video:

A double-secret first-look at Squarespace 6 E-commerce (Video)

You read correctly— Squarespace is shaking the e-commerce tree, and it's freaking fantastic. 

What gives me the chills, is the ability to drag products around the page using V6's "Layout Engine" functionality, the same way you can with images, videos, maps, code blocks, quote blocks, etc.

This drastically changes things for the retailer who wants to bring a custom flair to their online store. 

Squarespace E-commerce integrates with Stripe, and is only available in the USA right now (assuming it's because of Stripe's US-only reach currently).

Give Squarespace a try— just get in there and play a little to see what you can do! Squarespace.com (and when you find there's stuff you can't do, give Squareflair a shout)

Update on Friday, February 15, 2013 by Alan Houser

Behold! The official Announcement:
http://blog.squarespace.com/blog/squarespace-commerce-is-here

Creating a Squarespace Login Template - The Easy Way

I've seen this question come-up on the Squarespace forums in the past— the need exists where people want to have a unique login template for their site.

Well, it's cake. It just takes a little juggling knowledge.

404 Error Pages

This same technique applies for your Squarespace 404 Error page (the page a visitor sees when a "page isn't found" because of a broken link). The difference is— the Login & Error pages have no "Page ID", so it's not really that easy to add a special design for 404 error pages. (like these)

Adding QR Codes to your Squarespace Site

Have you ever wondered why someone would ever want to scan a QR Code on a website?

I have to admit, I've always considered it a little silly to add a QR code to a webpage, and even have gotten into a friendly Twitter debate with friends on the topic. Adding QR codes to "objects" like posters, cereal boxes and even lawn mower boxes make total sense to me. 

My earlier opinion about QR Codes on web pages was— the user is already RIGHT THERE on their computer, so why would they ever want to take-out their smart-phone and scan their computer screen? 

That is, until a recent client gave me reason to re-consider my stance. A client wanted to add a QR code to their "map" page, partly as a novelty, but mostly so customers viewing the website's locations page would have a way to "send the map to their phone".  I caved; It's really not a bad idea. If the site visitor doesn't know what a QR Code is, they can ignore it— similarly, the way we all ignore barcodes on any product we consume. (Well, exactly like a product barcode in-fact). 

Earlier on my blog, I shared how to use bit.ly to create QR Codes. But I thought you would benefit from this brief tutorial to show you how I would add a QR Code to a Squarespace site.

The Great Bit.ly Redesign of 2012 :)

Bit.ly went through a recent re-design. To access the "info page" that contains the QR Code, just add a "+" immediately after the bit.ly URL to access that page. Exmaple: bitly.com/PrxlQa+

Adding Author Photos to Blogs in Squarespace

It's been possible for a while to add "author photos" to posts, but it's a little confusing exactly HOW to do this. In-fact, Squarespace has a helpful page that gets you started in the right direction: journal.squarespace.com/style-by-author ... but they only get you part of the way there. This is because there are so many different ways to configure a blog/journal; EVERY site is different. 

If you're a code detective, you can get to the bottom of this mystery, but it's not easy without a little sweaty sleuthing. :) 

On a recent client project, I had to re-discover how to do this all over again, as it was about 5 months since I had done it last, so it was a little foggy to me. (see Fruition Partners' blog that I built several months back)

I decided to record a screencast to walk you through this, because it's so much easier to just show you.

Special thanks to Wistia and Courseload.