Video Guide: Use the #1 Template in Squarespace 7.1

Squarespace has a lot of templates to choose from with any feature being interchangeable. After working on close to 400 different sites, I have collected helpful information and tips that I think Squarespace should make more obvious. Use this video guide to clear up some of the confusion on building your ideal template!

Transcript:

Hello, and welcome to the channel! In today's video we are going to talk about templates on Squarespace, how to pick the best one and actually a very simple solution to all of this.
Okay. So you see I'm here on the Squarespace website. I'm going to click on templates. Recently, I had a situation come up with a client where the client literally built a secondary website because they wanted layouts and features of a different template on that new website.

But this is kind of the hard part about it, and this is why I want to make this video to make it so clear - Pick your starting point on the Squarespace templates. All of these templates are exactly the same, so they all look different. They have different colors and different fonts and different fields and all of it.

But at the end of the day, you're still working with Squarespace 7.1. And that means that any feature you see on this template versus this template. Olive graduates versus Ventura versus this one, versus that one. Any of them, any of them, any of them. On this page every idea, the concept that you see on every single page is interchangeable on another is creatable on any site. So if you're on Squarespace 7.1 and you see a feature that is not technically on your website, or you just don't see it on your website right now, it is there. You could get it and you could set it up.

Its just a matter of understanding what you're looking at, how it's set up and getting the right settings built in which actually sounds complex. But for the most part it’s really easy. Squarespace does this, I think just mainly for marketing purposes. So if you’re like “I don't know what to build” it's an easy way to connect on like, “oh, I want to build a fashion website.” It's like, oh, these are made for fashion. But surely all of these sites here, everything you're looking at is interchangeable. So I can have this look or this look or that look or any of these looks on any site. So if you're looking at online sources or portfolios or memberships, blogs, launch page, all of it can be done on any template, as long as you're in 7.1. Now, let me clarify what that means.

If you're building a brand new site, everything's interchangeable. If you're on Squarespace 7.0, then that's where it could get a little bit complicated. Let me show you what I mean. So I'm going to go to the templates page. So as soon as you come to this page, all content, if you just built your site 99%, it is Squarespace 7.1

Now, if you scroll down all the way to the bottom, or if your site is just older, they have this thing that says these templates are the latest version of Squarespace looking for an earlier version. So if you click here, these will take you to different templates. Now, these templates here where you see browser version seven, these templates here, all of these, hide this again, all of these templates have different features. So this is definitely a different ballpark ballgame, but there's really no reason to use these.

There's no major reason why you should go to these, unless you're going to build your site with developer mode on. Honestly, if you're thinking about building a new site on developer mode and it's today, if you're going to build your site on developer mode and thinking, “oh, I need to use 7.1, I'm looking at developer mode, I want to customize the site fully” - I would highly recommend - I love Squarespace - but go to WebFlow or maybe something else. But go to WebFlow, you'll have full control. It'll be way easier. And you don't have to go into lines and lines and lines of code. Just do it in WebFlow, way easier. I wouldn't even try that here.

So at the end of the day, my recommendation patching hundreds and hundreds of websites and seeing hundreds of projects is that the best thing for you to do is to build it on 7.1, pick the template you like, what's the final answer here. Just pick one. You think you like at the end of the day, if you like something, one page from one site and another page from another site, well, you could, in some ways combine it.

Start with one, and then you can start to duplicate and build out the same process and flow and feel like the other pages have. Now, if you're completely new to this and you don't even know how to see something on a different site and add it to yours. Well, what you could do is you could start your site, your main site, and you can start another free trial on another site and see how the page is built and see, is it a blog? Is it a portfolio? Is it store - and then copy the styles.
Figuring out how to make it on your site and launch it.

It's not crazy. It might sound a little bit like heady or complicated, but at the end of the day, it's really not that crazy. And just the final note, while I'm in this video, there's you could Google this if you're trying to find it, but if you are trying to figure out where your site is built, all you need to do is just go to your menu and click on help and there at the bottom, it'll say Squarespace version. So immediately it'll tell you what version of Squarespace you're using. So if you're using 7.0, yes, there are differences in templates - if you're using 7.1, there are no differences in templates. Anything you get in one template, you'll get in another template. It's all one template. So it's a little bit confusing, but they do that for marketing purposes.

Hey, thank you for watching, please like, subscribe and hit that notification. When you hit the like button, it tells a YouTube algorithm something, but what it tells me is that you got value from this video. So if you answered a question or you found something insightful in this video, please hit that like button and notify me that you got value from this video. With that, I will see you guys in the next video. Peace.

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