Squarespace RSS: How to Add a Feed to Your Website

Really Simple Syndication (RSS) feeds have been around since before the 2000's. One of the web's oldest and still active forms of social media, RSS feeds allow you to build your own "virtual newspaper" by pulling new content from your favorite websites and serving it up in an easy-to-use RSS reader  (e.g., Feedly).  Squarespace recently announced a new RSS support feature. Read on to find out how to add an RSS feed to your Squarespace website.

How to Add an RSS Feed to Your Sidebar

Adding a link to your Squarespace blog's RSS feed on your blog's sidebar is easy. First, identify where you want to place your RSS feed on your site. I have an email sign-up option on my blog. Putting the RSS feed link in this area seems to makes sense.

This is as good a spot as any for an RSS feed link.

Log into your Squarespace website and view your blog. Click on the Edit Content option. Next, click on the plus sign to add a new content block. Click on the Social tab to locate the RSS feed block. Drag it to the desired location on your blog's sidebar.

The RSS feed block is within the Squarespace Social blocks tab.

Next, pick the blog you want to link to. You'll see an option for every different collection you have on your Squarespace site, currently including blogs, image galleries, and events. 

Choose from any collection on your Squarespace site.

And that's all there is to it. Upon hitting save, your blog's RSS feed will be featured on your sidebar and will update automatically every time you publish new content on your site. 

An RSS feed featured on a Squarespace site. 

Is RSS Even Worth It? 

The Squarespace RSS feature gives you 95% of what you'd need (i.e., I'd love to be able to customize feed URLs to integrate with Feedburner) to add this great feature to your site, but is it even worth it?

RSS isn't widely used--Google even announced the sun-setting of its Google Reader product--but don't let its low adoption dissuade you from adding an RSS feed to your Squarespace site. People who subscribe to your RSS feed can often be considered among the most loyal followers of your blog because, unlike social media network followers who are exposed to every tweet and status update possible, RSS subscribers elect only to see your new blog content when they follow you.

The 11 Most Popular Squarespace Cities in the World

Web publishing platform Squarespace is an international hit, both in terms of its customer base and more recently its business operations. Squarespace's Dublin offices were announced in early May, marking the first office outside of the U.S. for the start-up content management system.

While Squarespace offices in Ireland is news, international customers is nothing new. Squarespace has been popular in the U.K., U.S., Canada, and Australia for years.

The Most Popular Squarespace Cities in the World

According to Google Trends, Squarespace's international popularity is greatest in its hometown of New York , but Toronto, Sydney and London all rank among the top great Squarespace cities. Here's the breakdown of the top eleven:

1. New York City, United States
2. San Francisco, United States
3. Los Angeles, United States
4. Seattle, United States
5. Toronto, Canada
6. Sydney, Australia
7. Melbourne, Australia
8. Chicago, United States
9. Atlanta, United States
10. Houston, United States
11. London, England

What countries will Squarespace expand to next?

Big Picture Web Turns Four Years Old

I pulled up Google Analytics to take a look at the web analytics stats for BigPictureWeb.com this week and what did I find? This humble home to Squarespace tips and resources turned four years old on May 27, 2013. That's right. I've been writing articles to help Squarespace website owners with marketing for their websites since 2009.

Big Picture Web turned 4 on May 27, 2013.

The 6 Most Popular Squarespace Resources in 4 Years

What pages and blog posts have been the most helpful for Squarespace website owners over the years? Here are the most popular half dozen pages on BigPictureWeb.com--as measured by lifetime website visits--in the last four years:

1. Squarespace Vs. Wordpress - Here's a comparison I did in partnership with a Wordpress expert to write a comparison on the two content management systems. Obviously I rooted for Squarespace.
2. The Squarespace Template Guide - Are you planning a new Squarespace website? This guide contains a complete list of all of Squarespace's current templates, screenshots, and the pro's/con's of using each one for your next website project.
3. Why You Should Consider a Squarespace Website - Arguably our best resource, this page demonstrates the value of owning a Squarespace website to the potential owner.
4. My Squarespace Review - All the way back from 2010, see my first impressions from moving to Squarespace from Drupal for BigPictureWeb.com. This review was for Squarespace v5.
5. Squarespace SEO Secrets You Should Know - Looking to drive more search engine traffic to your Squarespace website? Be sure to reference this handy guide back from 2010 to help your website earn more visits from the Googles.
6. Squarespace Designer Directory - Our free directory features over twenty professional Squarespace designers that can help you take your website to the next level with Squarespace v5 or Squarespace 6.

Your Favorite BPW Resources?

Are you a fan of Big Picture Web? Then thank you for helping to make this blog a repeat destination for many Squarespace website owners. I'm happy if I was able to help you out in any small way with these how-to's. 

What resource or resources have been the most helpful to you over the years? What topics relative to owning and marketing your Squarespace website should I write about over the next four years?

Perspective on Squarespace Pricing: What You Need to Know

You're probably looking at Squarespace as a potential new home for your website and wondering what to make of the fee structure. Squarespace pricing is a steal in almost all cases relative to the value it provides to website owners, but it may not seem that way on the surface if you're used to a free hosted service or through options that allow multiple websites through a single hosting account (e.g., Wordpess).

Read on to find out if you'll find value in one of the three main Squarespace pricing points.

What Squarespace Pricing Options Do You Have?

Squarespace provides three major pricing options:

• Standard - $8/month or $96/year ($10/month if you pay month-by-month)
• Unlimited - $16/month or $192/year ($20/month if you pay month-by-month)
• Business - $24/month or $288/year ($30/month if you pay month-by-month)

The standard account is good for basic blogs and websites, but is a bit light on features and options. Unlimited is the best value because you get unlimited pages, storage, bandwidth, and contributors. The business account includes full ecommerce support including a store and checkout integration. 

Squarespace Coupon Codes

There are a few Squarespace coupon codes out there, but they can be hard to find. My best advice is to listen to a few episodes of Tech News Today to get an up-to-date Squarespace coupon code and a discount for your website account purchase.

Best of all, Squarespace comes with a two-week free trial. You don't even need a credit card to get stared.

What Do You Pay for When You Build a Website?

The basic composition of all websites includes hosting it (i.e., storing the files that make up your website on the internet), registering your domain name (e.g., renting the rights to www.yoursite.com), and the tools to manage changes and make updates to your website content. 

When you build with Squarespace, you're getting all three at the same time (provided you go with the yearly plan, but more on that later). With other platforms the tools to manage the website are often free (e.g., content management system like Wordpress), but then you often have to register your domain to the tune of ~$10/year and pay for hosting each month ranging from $5-$100/month depending on the quality.

Comparing Website Features to Gain Pricing Perspective

Let's compare Squarespace and Wordpress on the four main building blocks of a website:

Hosting - When you look at hosting, you're looking for reliability and scalability because you want your website to always be there and you want it to be able to handle a lot of traffic if need be. With Squarespace, you get the most dependable hosting you could hope for and shared hosting that can handle spikes in traffic from reddit and the social web. Wordpress hosting is cheap on the low end, but can get expensive quickly if you want to match the scalability of Squarespace's hosting. 

Domain Registration - For the most part, this cost is independent of the content management system you choose. You're nearly always going to have to pay around $10/year to register the right to use your domain name. An exception is if you go with the annual Squarespace plan, which comes with a free domain name as a part of the checkout process. Simply add your domain name upon checkout and your Squarespace website comes pre-mapped to your custom domain.

Content Management - The last dimension you should consider when comparing website platforms and their respective pricing models is the content management tools themselves. Squarespace provides their award-winning cloud-based tools standard with every account, while Wordpress needs to be downloaded and installed on your own server. Furthermore, Wordpress requires constant updates while Squarespace automatically installs new features frequently.

Support: Above and beyond the basic components of a website is the ability to maintain and update it without hassles. Squarespace provides 24/7 email-based support which is extremely effective, and they also provide chat-based support during the week. You're on your own with Wordpress which can be a pain if you don't know how to do it yourself.

The Only Drawback of the Squarespace Pricing Model

The only drawback I can think of with Squarespace pricing is if you have a lot of different websites. Squarespace provides the tools, hosting and support for one domain at a time. The math can start to add up after a certain number of websites, after which points a shared hosting account and a solution like Wordpress begins to look more attractive than Squarespace.

What's your opinion on the Squarespace pricing model and the account options available? Do the options available support the needs of websites owners broadly enough and is there enough value in the premium tools to charge $8-$20/month?

How to Add Contributors and Manage Permissions with Squarespace

Managing permissions on a website can be tricky. Some content management systems over-complicate the process of adding new contributors to your website. Squarespace's streamlined permissions and contributor management system provides a balance of granular controls and streamlined experience.

How to Add Contributors to Your Squarespace Website

Adding contributors to help manage your Squarespace website is a breeze. Simply navigate to the Contributors page within the Settings section of your Squarespace website.

Add people to your website's management roster through the Contributors page in your Squarespace settings.

Select Add Contributor to start the simple workflow. Enter the name and email address of your new content manager and then select from one of the seven website roles, which define the levels of access afforded to the new contributor:

• Administrator - Administrators have full permission to access everything on your website. Only assign this role to your most trusted team members and those who require the deepest levels of access.
• Content Editor - These folks can update any of the content on your website but can't change core settings. This role is ideal for bloggers and copywriters.
• Billing - This role is solely for the person who pays for the website to be able to log in and modify billing information, as well as make payments for the website. If you manage a client's website and they don't play a part in the content management, this is likely the role for your client.
• Reporting - This role allows the contributor to gain access to your website's web analytics statistics. They don't have permission to edit content on the website.
• Comment Moderator - These folks can leave comments on your site, as well as edit and approve other comments. They don't have access to modify content on your site.
• Trusted Commenter - These folks don't have access to any of the content on your site, but can bypass moderation when leaving comments if your comments are set to require moderation before publishing
• Store Manager - A person with this role receives notifications from your store, which can be very helpful in processing orders or handling issues. They don't, however, have access to change product or store content.

Managing permissions on your Squarespace website is easy.

Standard Squarespace plans come with two contributors standard, while the Unlimited and Business plans include unlimited contributors. All things considered, Squarespace's light-weight permissions settings get the job done while avoiding cumbersome contributors controls. Can you think of any scenarios not covered by Squarespace's contributor settings?