From Wix to Squarespace
I just jumped from Wix to Squarespace to rebuild my photography website. Not that there was anything wrong with my old website (see screenshots below), but after eight years of using Wix, it was time for something new. I had heard a lot about Squarespace through advertisement and sponsored messages from photographers I follow on YouTube, so I thought I would give it a try. Here’s a couple of advantages of Squarespace compared to Wix:
It’s considerably cheaper, especially because Wix charges a premium for storage space. The Personal Plan of Squarespace is both cheaper and offers unlimited storage space (except for videos, which I don’t care about).
Squarespace offers beautiful templates for different types of websites, including photography and other creative pursuits. There is less choice than in Wix, but the designs feel more elegant.
Its user interface is more straightforward, containing way less options, which prevents you from getting overwhelmed and making a mess of your website.
I love smart quotes (I mean the curly ones: “” and ‘’), which are readily available in Squarespace, but not in Wix. I know it’s probably not even a tiny advantage for most, but I just happen to be a sucker for proper typography.
There are also some important drawbacks to Squarespace, however:
Its simplicity gives you less freedom to place and change elements as you wish. There are workarounds for this, called “Cascading Style Sheets” (CSS) and “code injection” (unfortunately, the latter is not available if you go for the Personal Plan). These features enable you to rearrange and reformat certain elements through custom code. Although the numerous forums out there can help you out, custom code can be cumbersome at times. In Wix, I never had to write a single line of code.
Which brings me to a related point: Sometimes, there are excessive white spaces between page sections that extend beyond the underlying grid. I believe that these spaces are part of the design template (“Beaumont” in my case), but it’s definitely a part that I don’t like. Annoyingly, these voids can only be removed with custom code, unless I’m missing something.
There is no auto-save function, which makes you run the risk of losing edits after a system crash. Wix not only offers auto-save, but also a sort of time machine that enables you to jump back to earlier versions of your website. In Squarespace, regularly hitting “Save” is essential to prevent trouble.
Despite these drawbacks, I appreciate Squarespace because it gives me just what I need for a very reasonable price. I’m pretty sure I will enjoy using it in the years to come, while dealing with its shortcomings.
I also like the new look of my website: A bit more “classy” with the serif font type (Adobe Garamond Pro), less sterile if you will. For the site logo and favicon, which I made using Adobe Express, I decided to stay with the elegant sans serif font Raleway. I just played with the letter spacing and font sizes to give the logo some character.
I do miss the inset labels on my old portfolio pages (Portrait, Land & Water, and Everything Else, superimposed on the slideshow reels), which I was quite proud of as a non-designer, but are impossible for me to recreate in Squarespace at this point. To be honest, however, these labels were a bit gimmicky anyway as they served no clear purpose.
The most important change in my new website is the emphasis on photographic storytelling. I also got rid of the somewhat generic site title, “Available Light,” to replace it with just my name and the tagline, “Photographic Stories.” I hope that these changes make my portfolio more focused and meaningful.
Some screenshots from my old website, which was hosted by Wix.
