Ayup! Here we are again. I’ve just migrated my site back to WordPress, following a whole month on Squarespace. Round and round we go. This is the second time I’ve wasted countless hours and hundreds of pounds.
Honestly, I think there’s some sort of bipolar related issue going on here. But that’s not what this post is about. Despite really wanting a simpler solution to WordPress, Squarespace comes with its own set of complications.
For most photographers, you’d probably never even know about them. On the surface, it’s a clean, easy-to-use platform that performs reasonably well. Under the hood, however, a plethora of browser errors, audit issues and completely unacceptable loading times await.
Squarespace sacrifices
Obviously, moving to Squarespace, I knew I’d be sacrificing loading times. Surely, it’s not that bad, though? It can’t be, if so many photographers use the platform. Wrong! PageSpeed Insights scores generally range from 30 to 60 on mobile. Yikes!
The worst of it is, this also includes blog pages with zero images. I could sort of accept 60 on the portfolio page, but surely the rest of the site should be pretty nippy.
Squarespace relentlessly tell you that PageSpeed Insights is only for people who code their own websites. If anyone from the platform is reading this, we know that’s not true. Please stop telling folks that.
Browser errors and audit results
The cracks really start to appear when you dive into errors and audit results. A good friend over on Mastodon, Brandon, initially pointed out an issue with browser console errors. This prompted further investigation.
Following several emails back and forth with Squarespace support, the final answer was to just ignore them. Ok then. Next up, an issue with links not having a discernible name. This was on the “Read More” button underneath each blog post.
I went ahead and removed the read more option. Visitors would then simply click on the post title. But the issue was still being flagged. It turns out they remain in the HTML. Sigh.
In all fairness to Squarespace, when I raised the concern, it was added to a list of issues that folks can vote on to be fixed.
The perfect platform (doesn’t exist)
WordPress isn’t perfect, nor is Squarespace. Both have an entirely different set of challenges to overcome. I was just talking with another Mastodon friend, Ewen, about Ghost. Maybe this will be an option in the future.
For now, though, after all of the stress of migrating everything back and forth, it’s time to chill. At least now, both of my websites are all in the same place. Additionally, having just published and ranked 12 blog posts over on my business site, I’m kinda feeling the WordPress way again.
And hey, it’s not all been a complete waste of time. At least it gave me something to write about…