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

Palmer Trinity School - "The Falconer" Redesign

We just launched a website redesign for "The Falconer" —The Online Student Publication of Palmer Trinity School. It's great to read about instant success and praise!

With more than 2,000 views in just over 48 hours, the redesigned Falconer, which launched yesterday morning, smashed its previous number of recorded visits over the same period.

The Falconer, Palmer Trinity School’s online student newspaper, has been under reconstruction since August, and, according to Journalism Advisor Dave Cutler, “was in serious need of an overhaul.”

The new web site is much more user-friendly and aesthetically appealing. It also has fresher, higher quality content.

“It’s much more accessible and streamlined,” Editor-in-Chief Preston Michelson ’13 said. “I really think it will attract new viewers and encourage frequent visits.”

Source: Redesigned Falconer Surpasses 2,500 Hits In 48-Hours by JORDAN FIGUEREDO at The Online Student Pub of Palmer Trinity School on October 16, 2012

Visit The Falconer

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.)

Easy Image Pre-loader in Squarespace

This is an easy way to pre-load images on your site: just add the images’ paths to the DIV class, and call the DIV in your HTML.

In other-words, you will need to inject the "loader div" somewhere in your html. You can even stick it in the footer of your site, if you don't have "injection points" at your disposal.

Just add this HTML:

<div class="loader"></div>

...and add the following custom CSS (below). The DIV will not be visible but the images will preload nicely.

div.loader{
background:url(/storage/hover.gif) no-repeat;
background:url(/storage/hover2.gif) no-repeat;
background:url(/storage/hover3.gif) no-repeat;
margin-left:-10000px;
}

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)