Squarespace is a drag and drop website builder for anyone needing to create a website. The builder is accessed via a website manager that you log into after signing up. The first step in creating a Squarespace site is to set up a trial account that allows you to work with Squarespace for 14 days—which you may be able to extend for 7 more days.
- [Instructor] You'll see, as we go through Squarespace, that it's actually a drag and drop website builder, they call it, and it's basically for anyone who needs to create a (chuckles) website. The builder is accessed via a Website Manager that you'll log in to after you sign up. And the first step in creating a Squarespace site is to set up either a trial account or just go in and pay right away, and there's several different levels you can work with. With a trial account, you get 14 days, I believe. When you're ready to take your own site live, you can actually upgrade at any time.
Each account you create with an email password-type thing. You can have just about as many websites as you want and even associate them with other email addresses. So with a browser open, make sure you go to squarespace.com. Come over here to the Get Started. Now, if you've already created an account, click Log In. Otherwise, click Get Started. The crazy thing about Squarespace is they don't mess around. They're like, (laughs) they're like let's jump in! We're about to just start picking templates and start working and creating, et cetera, so you got to be prepared to get this done.
Now, you're going to start with a template. Template's the most important thing you're going to pick to start with obviously, and a template is your starting point. It's an initial design. It has initial settings and content. It's, you know, a lot of these, there are a lot in here actually, there used to be only a few, a lot of these are designed for specific things. As a matter of fact, on the left, you'll see categories. If you click on something like Creative Services, for instance, it's going to sort that list for us, so we can start looking at things. Now, we're going to start with Hayden, which is right here.
If you see that, make sure you choose it. Because if you don't, you won't be able to follow along and do exactly as I do because a lot of these templates are a little bit different. They have different content. They sometimes work a little differently. You can switch templates later on, you'll see, but for now, go and click Hayden. It's going to take you in and say, okay, here it is. Here's a little description for you. Down here, you should, if you scroll down a bit, you should see that you can preview this, and I have a, sometimes it has a hard time actually viewing it, there we go, on different devices, just a quick look to see what it looks like.
If you click on it, it'll open it up in your browser here and show you the site, so you can go through it if you want to, just to see what they've got. Now, know that you can change a lot. Okay, you're not going to have to pick and choose and keep whatever they have in there. This is a starting point. So go ahead and click Start With Hayden. And you're going to create your site. So we don't need a credit card, which is great. So I'm just going to fill in some information here. Why don't you do the same, if you haven't done this yet. And I've got an email address that I set up specifically for this, just so that, you know, I can create something.
Let me go in and create a password. Luckily, it won't show it, there we go. And then you agree. You're going to see this is a really cool UI right here, see that green, it says that's a good password, let's say. Click on I agree to the Terms of Service. Click Sign Up & Create. Or if you have an existing account, go ahead and click down there. This is going to create your account right now. This is something you're going to hold onto. Now, you're going to see up here, the URL. Mine is brian-wood-whatever.squarespace.com.
That is your Squarespace URL. You're going to remember that. Okay, otherwise, you can go to the home Squarespace screen and just log in from there, pretty much what we just did, just log in. Right here, it's going to say let's start, so click on Start. Let's go in and set up a few things. You can set all of this up later, it really doesn't matter. But why not do it now? So I'm going to select a category. I'm going to say, you know what, this is a personal site, just information to start. Click Next. What is this website about? This is information they're collecting.
I'll say, ehh, it's Personal. If you want to say it's a business, if it's other things, go ahead and choose that. Click Next. Any Goals you want, you can skip this if you really want to. It's your call. I'm going to click Skip. And then down here, the final step it's going to ask us is what's our site title? In some of the templates, this information is actually going to show up at the top of the page or somewhere. Just click Done. We can change it later, don't worry. And your site's ready to go. You can see you've got the template sitting out here. You can see over here on the left that you've got some information.
These are all the places you're going to go to do things like Pages, Design, Commerce, Analytics, et cetera. And down here, you should see that it says Trial Account. Later on, you can upgrade if you really want to, but we can build this thing and work on it, and do what we need to do without paying any money right now. So we are currently in our Squarespace site. If you come back to this, you're going to see once again that URL. Come back to that URL. If it needs to log you in in a different browser maybe or different machine, it's going to ask you to do that. Also, you could share this with people if you wanted to, this URL, and they could see it unless we do things like password protect it or pull it down, et cetera.
You can also go to the squarespace.com website and log in from there. It's up to you.
Released
4/27/2017- Signing up with Squarespace
- Editing your profile and site settings
- Changing a template
- Editing a logo and title
- Adding pages and navigation
- Inserting banners, images, videos, and maps
- Adding and styling text
- Arranging content
- Registering a domain
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