Building your first Squarespace site

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Building your first Squarespace site

Last updated April 18, 2023 17:38

Create, organize, and style site content to bring your business, brand, or store online.

If you’re just getting started with Squarespace, this guide covers the basic but essential steps to create an online presence for your personal brand, small business, or online store.

When building a site, you'll create the page structure, add your content, and then set the site styles. If you think of your website like a house, the site’s structure is the arrangement of rooms in relation to one another, the content is the furniture you fill the rooms with, and the style is the combination of colors, brands, and other flourishes you use to make it feel like home.

Tip: Register for our Getting Started with Squarespace webinar where we'll show you the basics of setting up your site. You'll learn how to start a free trial, choose a template, build a homepage, create a contact page, and change your fonts and colors.

Watch a video

Create your site’s structure

You'll create the structure of your site by adding pages to your navigation. When you add a page in the Pages panel, its title appears as a link in your site header. By dividing up your site’s content across different pages, you ensure visitors can find essential updates, make purchases, or get in touch with you.

Tip: See the sections below to learn about adding a blog or selling products on your site.

Add pages

To add pages to your navigation:

Open the Pages panel and click + next to Main Navigation.
Select the type of page you want to add, or click Page Layouts for pre-built layout pages.
Enter a page title and press Enter.
If you want this page to be the first page visitors see, set it as your homepage.

Your site includes some demo pages when you create it. You can replace demo content and rearrange the pages to fit your structure, or delete them if you want to create your pages from scratch.

Tip: To create gated content in members-only pages, you can add Member Areas to your site.

Edit your site header

Your site header can also include a site title or logo, icons that link to social media, a call-to-action button, and a shopping cart icon. These help highlight important features for your visitors.

To edit your site header:

On your site preview, click Edit.
Hover over the site header and click Edit Site Header.

To learn more, visit Building a site header.

Add content to your pages

After creating the structure of your site, it's time to add content to your pages. Pages are made up of individual sections, and depending on the section, you’ll add blocks or collection items to create the content:

Blocks are a drag-and-drop way to add text, images, buttons, and other features.
Collection items are sets of content like blog posts, products, and events.

Add content with blocks

Blocks are the primary feature you’ll use to display content on your site. To add blocks to a page:

Open the Pages panel.
In the left panel, click the page you want to edit.
Click Edit in the top-left corner of the page preview.
If the page is blank, click + to add a section. If the page already has sections, skip this step.
Click Add Block or an insert point and select the block you want to add. For more help, visit Adding content with blocks.

Repeat this process to add more blocks. To arrange your content, move blocks by clicking and dragging them around the page. Click Save to save your changes and keep editing, or click Exit and then Save to close the editor.

To add more sections to your page, click + above or below a section. You can add block sections, gallery sections, and auto layouts to any type of page. If you want to reuse the layout of a section, you can save it to add to other pages. To learn more, visit Page sections.

Add content with collection pages

Collections are sets of related items, such as blog posts on a blog page. All collection pages have a two-layer structure made up of a landing page and individual collection item pages. For example, a blog landing page shows a list of posts with featured images and excerpts, which you can click to open and read the full post.

Note: While you can delete collection page items, it's not possible to delete a collection page section without deleting the entire page. When you're working with demo content, note the page type you're using before customizing it, as it may have sections that can't be deleted. For the most flexibility, use a layout page.

Visit the linked guides below for specific steps:

Add a blog page (optional)

A blog page is ideal if you're planning on publishing new content regularly. You can add a new blog post to your blog page whenever you're ready to share something with your visitors. Follow the steps above to add a new blog page, then add posts and other content.

Add a new post

To add a blog post:

In the Pages panel, click your blog page.
Click + in the top-right corner of the side panel.
Add a title and content to your blog post.
Hover over Publish and click Publish to publish immediately.

Engage your audience

Blog pages include a number of built-in features to help make it easier for visitors to find and engage with your content:

To organize your posts so visitors can find similar content more easily, add categories and tags.
To let visitors interact with your content, enable comments.
To keep visitors up to date, add email subscriptions to your blog or turn your blog posts into Email Campaigns.

Set up a podcast

Blog pages can also be used to set up a podcast by using blog posts with audio blocks. Blog pages are designed for setting up your RSS feed with Apple Podcasts. To learn more, visit Podcasting with Squarespace overview.

Set up an online store (optional)

If you're on a Business or Commerce plan, you can sell products and services through your site. Use the checklist below to get your store up and running, and visit the linked guides for in-depth, step-by-step instructions.

Add products to a store page
Connect a payment processor
Set up shipping options (if you're selling physical products)
Set up tax rates
Customize your site's checkout

Edit your site’s style

Edit your site’s style to change fonts, colors, and other design elements. You’ll make site-wide changes to your content in the Design panel, and you can also make style changes to specific page sections.

Edit site-wide styles

To make style changes to your whole site, while editing a page, open site styles, then click:

Fonts - Choose a font pack and change the size of different text types
Colors - Choose a color palette and edit color themes
Animations - Add subtle animations to your content
Spacing - Change the padding or space between elements

You can also style your site's buttons, product items, and image blocks, or edit other design aspects, like your browser icon, lock screen, and checkout page.

To learn more, visit Making style changes.

Style individual sections

You can style individual sections with section styles to change aspects of their layout, display, or background. Section styles override global styles.

To edit section styles:

Open the Pages panel and click the page you want to edit.
Click Edit in the top-left corner of the page preview.
Hover over the section you want to style and click the pencil icon.
Your options will vary depending on the section. After making changes, click Save to save your changes and keep editing, or click Exit and then Save to close the editor.