About a month ago I switched from Wordpress to Squarespace. I couldn't be happier with the move and thought I would share some of the story behind the process. I had intially heard of Squarespace from David Sparks of MacPower Users podcast. If it was good enough for David, it might work for me.
Most serious bloggers go to Wordpress rather than away from it so I had to really consider the consequences of such a move.
- Would I regret the move?
- Is Squarespace reliable?
- Would I be able to import the hundreds of posts from The Daily Saint without losing my material?
So why the switch?
I was using Standard theme for Wordpress and had no real complaints except for the fact that it was limiting if you didn't know code- which I don't. I like to write and keep things simple.
Some guys want to tinker and customize. Tinkering is cool but customizing code is not something that warms my heart. To my geek friends, I mean no disrespect.
My RSS and iTunes components of the old site were messed up and it felt like duct tape and gum were holding it together.
So I tried the free version of Squarespace and liked the many, many different themes that you could use to publish a professionally looking blog.
Here's what I like:
- Aesthetics. It's important that I love the tools that I use and if you haven't seen Wordpress behind the scenes, it's pretty basic. Squarespace was built with an eye to making a nice looking website. The fonts are precise and the color palates make sense.
- Metrics. Built into Squarespace is a quick view of your metrics. Before I had to use a third party site to track my site's progress.
- Security. No longer do I worry about the site host (some outfit in New York) getting hacked or going down. Squarespace has real staff that respond quickly to your questions.
- Ease of use. I go to the Squarespace website, log in and get to work. It's that easy.
- Import-ability from WP. I had something like 800 posts from The Daily Saint to import over the Squarespace. They make it very easy and no joke, 100% of my posts were imported in less than 3 minutes. That's amazing.
So far I couldn't be happier. The real question is, do you like the new site?
Photo courtesy of
http://www.freedigitalphotos.net/images/view_photog.php?photogid=1708