Squarespace... Squarespace always changes.
Those of you who are avid fans of the Fallout series may recognise the little nod in the above title (Bethesda, we love you, please don't sue us).
As this title suggests, Squarespace is regularly changing, which can be both very positive and somewhat negative from a different point of view.
The positives are clear; progress means we have lots of new toys to play with, From the new list feature to how pages are built. We now have the ability to swiftly and easily build page structures, panel by panel. That's not even to mention (what I believe are) major simplifications and improvements to font selection and the ability to create your own colour chart to match your brand guidelines.
Three new modules are now live on our online Squarespace training course.
This is all overwhelmingly positive you may say, and you'd be right. But the downsides, you will be glad to hear, are for me to deal with. They come from a training perspective. As a Squarespace authorised trainer who has seen a huge swathe of changes from Squarespace 5.0, right the way through to the current Squarespace 7.1, I always greet the next Squarespace upgrade or addition as a double-edged sword.
From a PixelHaze Studio perspective, it means we can build websites more quickly, more efficiently and often with new shiny features.
From the PixelHaze Academy perspective, it means back to the drawing board with a requirement to create yet another version of the same training chapter for our Squarespace Box of tricks series.
Alas, in the grand scheme of things, it is a small price to pay for progress.
“We are breaking our Squarespace course down into modules, allowing us to attack an area of learning at a time This is opposed to having to rewrite the entire course.”
Creating a course for Squarespace is a bit like painting the Forth Bridge (the Scottish-based Forth Bridge is so long that once the painters reach one end, they have to begin again at the other). Due to fundamental and mostly positive changes to Squarespace 7.1, we have needed to focus on building the following new modules, which we are delighted to announce, are now complete:
Getting started
Page building
Summary blocks
The new modules bring the course bang up to date, and additionally, we have the following in the pipeline for winter and spring 2022:
The new style editor
List blocks
Content blocks
Stretching Squarespace
As requested by our Box of Tricks students, 'Stretching Squarespace' will crank the difficulty up one or two notches, showcasing some of the more advanced techniques that we use at PixelHaze studio to squeeze every last drop from Squarespace. This will cover everything from adding custom code, working with the chrome property inspector and some effective workarounds to provide you with more flexibility in your designs.
We have also taken on board your feedback and have been working on the production quality of our new videos, especially in relation to sound quality. After building a purpose-built Sound booth and upgrading our studio for video content, we feel we are finally making good headway.
Thanks for your patience and we hope you enjoy :)
