Moving to Squarespace 6 from Squarespace 5

I finally bit the bullet and made the leap from 5 to 6. Initially I was held back by the lack of support for my favourite blogging software, Marsedit. It doesn't look like Squarespace are going to put back the compatability with Marsedit any time soon. Eventually, I felt it would be easy enough just to work with Markdown text files and then copy and paste them into the Squarespace 6 post editor. It seems to work fine. I chose the template called Hudson.

The compelling reason to switch was the responsive design templates available on v6. Most of my traffic comes from mobile devices (phones and tablets), so this is important. I like the fact that I don't have to pinch and zoom on the iPhone to read the site easily.

I also decided to merge plaqueimaging.com and medbytes.tv into a single site with two distinct sections. I think it looks pretty good so far. Clean lines, no clutter. Almost iOS7-like. Don't laugh.

The switching process was reasonably easy. Getting used to the new system is happening slowly. I'm happy.

Leaving Wordpress for Squarespace - the downside

.Wordpress logo stacked rgbSquarespace logo horizontal black

8 months in and I love Squarespace. Well, I love Squarespace 5 actually. The themes are great, the interface is straightforward and I have integrated Google analytics into the site with no problem. If I wanted to, I could add image galleries and Google Adsense as well.

But the release of Squarespace 6 caused me a problem. It does not work with my favourite blogging application Marsedit. Marsedit is such a good application for blogging for several reasons - ease of image uploading, scheduled posts, multiple blog management and a very approachable developer.

I don't know if this issue will ever be fixed. But until it is, I will stay with v5 of Squarespace. It suits my needs and will be around for the long run according to the site.

Give it a test run by clicking the banner on the right side of this page (shameless affiliate link).

Edit: seems all is not well with Squarespace 6. Some Internet tech nerds are leaving to go to static blogs or back to self-hosted Wordpress setups.