Awhile back, I did a question and answer session on Instagram about SM+Co’s move from website hosting on Squarespace to hosting WordPress with Flywheel hosting.
Unfortunately, Instagram shortly thereafter temporarily blocked me from uploading videos, so it got completely lost! I recently combined the questions and answers into a video and added it to our neglected YouTube channel.
There are a lot of points in this video (which I made while walking one of my dogs), but here are the key takeaways:
Moving to a new platform forces you to really curate what you have on your website—it’s a lot of work to move things! I deleted about 50% of my content.
It’s important to think about tradeoffs. Squarespace is very simple and relatively hands off in terms of maintenance. WordPress is not, but we’ve automated and simplified as much as possible.
Security is less of a concern if you use proper hosting and don’t install weird and random plugins.
The blog migration was a pain and there was a lot of manual work—we didn’t completely do this, just focused on highlights.
We used a great suite of simple tools to make our move from Squarespace to WordPress:
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3 Responses
Hi Sarah! What a great article. Thanks. I’m currently taking a Squarespace 7.0 design course. New to web design and code but there is a fair bit of CSS hacking going on. And seems everyone is unimpressed with SS v7.1.
I want to start a blog and do web design on side. Would you reco I set up my blog on WP and would I need to take a course to learn how to make the WP site beautiful? Do you offer one? Any steer you can give would be great. I’ve spent the majority of last 6 wks learning SS 7.0 and keep seeing WP pop up as blogger pref? I thought WP was passé!? Is it having a resurgence since SS is making up their service? So hard to know where to focus time. Appreciate your thoughts. And thanks for free Content course! x
Hi Sarah! What a great article. Thanks. I’m currently taking a Squarespace 7.0 design course. New to web design and code but there is a fair bit of CSS hacking going on. And seems everyone is unimpressed with SS v7.1.
I want to start a blog and do web design on side. Would you reco I set up my blog on WP and would I need to take a course to learn how to make the WP site beautiful? Do you offer one? Any steer you can give would be great. I’ve spent the majority of last 6 wks learning SS 7.0 and keep seeing WP pop up as blogger pref? I thought WP was passé!? Is it having a resurgence since SS is muking up their platform? So hard to know where to focus time. Appreciate your thoughts. And thanks for free Content course! x p.s. love your style. Video was great. So fresh and authentic. Hello to pups.
Hi Christine! Glad you enjoyed! 7.1 is still frustrating to me, though we’re muddling through in order to get clients on the newer platform, as Squarespace has told is that it’s the future.
If you want to do website design as a business, I really encourage you to learn one platform well and then build on that knowledge—add Shopify or WordPress or Webflow! But get proficient in one first. Squarespace can be a great gateway for new designers, because you don’t have to learn as many techy things.
Serious bloggers tend to prefer WordPress as you can just do so much more with it. But I also know very successful bloggers using Squarespace, so again, it’s all about weighing pros and cons.
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3 Responses
Hi Sarah! What a great article. Thanks. I’m currently taking a Squarespace 7.0 design course. New to web design and code but there is a fair bit of CSS hacking going on. And seems everyone is unimpressed with SS v7.1.
I want to start a blog and do web design on side. Would you reco I set up my blog on WP and would I need to take a course to learn how to make the WP site beautiful? Do you offer one? Any steer you can give would be great. I’ve spent the majority of last 6 wks learning SS 7.0 and keep seeing WP pop up as blogger pref? I thought WP was passé!? Is it having a resurgence since SS is making up their service? So hard to know where to focus time. Appreciate your thoughts. And thanks for free Content course! x
Hi Sarah! What a great article. Thanks. I’m currently taking a Squarespace 7.0 design course. New to web design and code but there is a fair bit of CSS hacking going on. And seems everyone is unimpressed with SS v7.1.
I want to start a blog and do web design on side. Would you reco I set up my blog on WP and would I need to take a course to learn how to make the WP site beautiful? Do you offer one? Any steer you can give would be great. I’ve spent the majority of last 6 wks learning SS 7.0 and keep seeing WP pop up as blogger pref? I thought WP was passé!? Is it having a resurgence since SS is muking up their platform? So hard to know where to focus time. Appreciate your thoughts. And thanks for free Content course! x p.s. love your style. Video was great. So fresh and authentic. Hello to pups.
Hi Christine! Glad you enjoyed! 7.1 is still frustrating to me, though we’re muddling through in order to get clients on the newer platform, as Squarespace has told is that it’s the future.
If you want to do website design as a business, I really encourage you to learn one platform well and then build on that knowledge—add Shopify or WordPress or Webflow! But get proficient in one first. Squarespace can be a great gateway for new designers, because you don’t have to learn as many techy things.
Serious bloggers tend to prefer WordPress as you can just do so much more with it. But I also know very successful bloggers using Squarespace, so again, it’s all about weighing pros and cons.