Early frustrations with Squarespace

As I have mentioned before, I created this website because I wanted a hassle free blog. Now my free trial period has ended with Squarespace, I wanted to talk about my initial experience with setting up my site.

I've been initially very frustrated with simple things. One for example, is not being able to hide the menu by ticking a setting (instead having to write code, which still isn't what I wanted). Another is the header... someone must really love scrolling headers in their web team.

I think these frustrations come from the fact that I know what I want to do and I know how to code it, but Sqaurespace is attempting to balance customisability and ease of use. I'm not convinced it's there on the former.

Despite my frustrations, I do overall like the setup. Clearly I am no designer, and I expect things to evolve and change as time goes on. I love how easy it is to just write a blog post. That's exactly what I've wanted for a long time.

Post Mortem: Goodbye old website

I've lost count of how many times I've rebuilt my website...

From fancy content management systems to good old HTML, I've spent (and quite honestly wasted) a lot of time trying to find a website which does what I am looking for. Since I spend my day job writing code, it's difficult to come home be motivated enough to do more of the same if the ease of use isn't good enough.

It took me far too long to realise that, especially with the last incarnation of me website being an AWS + Foundation based site which linked to some medium posts... the cognitive load was too much, setting it up was hard work (for me at least) and the maintenance cost was too damn high.

So here I am, Squarespace. An awesome site which I have used before, a set up so easy that I can write a whole post while sitting on the toilet*.

Perfect.

*I'll let you decide how literal that statement is.