The 9 Shot Rule by Jeven Dovey

I like this video by Jeven Dovey, and want to share it. It’s quite simple. You need to capture a fixed set of shots for most projects. The basic premise here is that you need two each of establishing, wide, medium, and close-up shots. And then he also recommends a unique perspective shot.

Wide, medium, and close-up shots are fairly self-explanatory. If you don’t know, an establishing shot is conceptually a shot that defines the environment where the scene takes place. It’s typically a wide shot, but it can be a panning shot. It depends on the environment.

I think the unique perspective shots can be used as bridging of cutaway shots to cover breaks in continuity. Watching the video, I think that’s what he is suggesting.

I have used an approach kind of like this for a while. Even when I’m shooting stills rather than video, I still do this. It’s a good way to get organized and have a clear vision of what you are doing. I think if you wanted to do three of each shot rather than two that would be fine, but what’s important is to keep track and to be aware of what shots you have covered and which you don’t.

I hope you find the video illuminating, and I'm sure Mr. Dovey would appreciate it if you tapped the like button.

Sam

Squarespace Site Migration

Squarespace recently released its migration tool to move a version 7.0 Squarespace website to version 7.1. This is really good news for those who have a Squarespace 7.0 site and want to migrate to the latest version of Squarespace. This tool will be really handy for those who have a 7.0 site with a lot of content. Smaller sites with minimal content or sales data are probably better candidates for manual migration to a new version 7.1 site. Sometimes a fresh start is a good option and it certainly has benefits.

There are many articles on the Web explaining how to do this 7.0 to 7.1 migration. I think that the best source of guidance would be the Squarespace Help Center.

Simply search for something like “Squarespace version 7.0 to version 7.1 migration” and find the article “Moving from Squarespace version 7.0 to version 7.1”, but in the future maybe some newer articles on this topic. Now you have the detailed information you need from the people who know the product best. And by all means take the time to look at the whole document, not just the first three or four lines.

Something that jumps out at me as I read this document is the section titled: Differences between version 7.0 and 7.1. What I notice about this section is that it goes on and on and on. There are a lot of differences between versions 7.0 and 7.1. Having dealt with some system conversions in my own work over the years, each of these differences requires some kind of mapping to get from the original system to the new system. Each of these differences represents additional complexity and the potential for bad things to happen. In software systems, complexity tends to grow quickly as additional complicating factors come into play. For the sake of simplicity let's say that each difference introduces a doubling of complexity. All that doubling adds up to a pretty good chance that things might not work the way you expect.

I should probably say, at this point, that I’m not being critical of the solution that Squarespace has provided for moving from version 7.0 to version 7.1. In fact, I think it’s great that they have done the hard work of providing a migration solution. Without a doubt, they have invested many hundreds of hours of development time into this migration tool. What I'm saying is to be very careful using this tool.

For starters, and as the instructions tell you, set time aside to prepare for this migration. This is the sort of thing that deserves your undivided attention. And, you absolutely must duplicate your version 7.0 site before starting the conversion process. You will almost certainly need it later.

Follow the detailed instructions. This conversion updates your live website. If anything should go wrong it’s your public-facing website that will show the results. As far as I know, there’s no magical undo button, no versioning system that you can use to roll back a bad outcome.

I’m focusing on the negative, but I think it’s important to have a plan in place for these less likely but still possible bad outcomes. This is something to give thought to before starting a move from Squarespace 7.0 to 7.1. If you are working on a revenue-generating business website, what is management’s tolerance for risk? If it’s zero, then you probably need to have a meeting. Version 7.0 may suddenly be looking like a much better option.

Ok, I’m done being serious. This new tool for site migration from version 7.0 to 7.1 is a blessing, for sure. Many thanks to Squarespace for building it. Just be careful using it. Best of luck!

Sam

Sam here. I recently transferred a domain name away from the domain registrar Namecheap. I wanted to transfer it to Google Domains because I had a good experience there while administrating a domain name for somebody else that I created a website for. I wasn't sure though, so I did a little research on the Web.

I landed on a very popular website that offered a lot of advice about website hosting and affiliate marketing. They didn't like Google domains at all. When I looked at the reasons why they didn't like Google Domains, it was stuff that I just knew was wrong, like that it was an expensive option. I thought to myself why would somebody make such a clear mistake, then it occurred to me: affiliate marketing. You cannot make money recommending Google Domains to your website visitors. The best options for affiliate marketers are other domain registrars that pay big money for referrals. I'm guessing Google Domain pays nothing for a referral.

Something I’ve known for a while is that good advice does not come looking for you, and bad advice seems to be everywhere. Sadly, this holds true for information you find on the Web. I decided to go with Google Domains.

As I explored this option, I was really surprised by how easy Google has made the domain transfer process. Until very recently, transferring a domain was something that had remained fairly complicated. You had to deal with cryptic network settings and things that just didn't make much sense to people without a networking background. I was pleasantly surprised that this has improved. I thought I would talk briefly about the process of transferring a domain into the Google Domains environment. Of course, I'm talking here about transferring a domain that you already own. If you're buying a new domain name the process will be much easier.

The first step is to go to the Google Domains web page, https://domains.google/. When there, you can either search for your new domain name or transfer a domain you already own. For me, I chose the latter option.

Now that you chose to continue on the transfer domain name process you end up on a page where you enter the name of the domain name you want to transfer. So, enter the name you intend to transfer and hit Enter to continue.

Now on this page, you need the current registrar to unlock the domain and get the authorization code. This part of the process will be different for every registrar. When you have released the domain for transfer and obtained to code you need, you can return to this page to enter this information and click Continue to go to the next step in the process.

Now you need to decide if you want Google to manage your DNS settings for you. The default is to let Google copy and maintain your DNS, and this is probably the right choice unless you have your own DNS servers configured and want to continue using them. This is a technical point and you may need to ask your current hosting provider for direction on this question. Click the Continue button when you are ready.

This screen is easy. You need to decide if you want privacy protection and auto-renew to be on. The default of on and on is a good choice. You also need to pay. Tap the “Proceed to Checkout” button to get this out of the way.

When you are done paying, the transfer process will begin. This whole process was pretty simple. Much less complicated than it was just a few years ago. More of a DIY task than a network administrator task. It’s so good to see that even domain name administration is becoming easier.

The transfer process I just described was for a domain name that I had parked and was not being used. There was another domain name I needed to transfer that was attached to a live website that had been using Google Workspace for email and other services for a long time.

As you might imagine, this transfer could be more complicated. Ironically, it ended up being not much more of a challenge. The transfer process was exactly like the one I described first except that at the end the DNS settings were not good and I had to use the Squarespace control panel to configure the new DNS settings. This process ended up being as simple as clicking a couple of buttons, and the website was back live in less than 10 minutes. Reconnecting the Google Workspace account required one more button click. I’m very sure that the simplicity of this transfer was the result of a collaboration between Google and Squarespace. The process was a simple DIY task.

This isn’t intended to be a tutorial on how to transfer a domain to Google Domains. It’s just illustrative of how simple the process has become. Not too many years ago transferring a domain name was something to dread. Now it’s relatively simple. Well, if you're using Google Domains and Squarespace hosting anyway. If not, your experience may be different.

I traveled to Pella Iowa a couple of weeks ago for the Tulip Time festival. It truly is a wonderful small-town festival with so many things to see and do. My primary interest was the tulips and the gardens, but that is by no means all there is to do. They have a daily parade, live performances at various locations, many street vendors and cafes, informational presentations about Dutch culture, and on and on. Do a Google search or the two primary websites for information about the event seem to be:

https://www.pellahistorical.org/tuliptime

https://www.visitpella.com/

One piece of advice I have for anyone going to Tulip Time is to plan well ahead of time for your visit and know where you will park and how you will get around. During Tulip Time the population of Pella grows from its normal 11,000 to something in excess of 100,000 people. To say the least, getting around can be a challenge. The Pella Historical website (above) has information related to getting around during Tulip Time.

A few pictures from my visit.

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Sam here, welcome to my website. What I want to do with this article is talk a little about how I think technology has changed website design and implementation over time. My background was in information systems, systems analysis, and software development.

My first exposure to the World Wide Web (Web) came in the mid-1990s at Youngstown State University (YSU). I was an undergraduate student and worked as a student consultant in the university computer labs. Someone handed me a printout of some HTML and it seemed so strange, but I had previously worked with Windows help files and was aware of yet another markup language: SGML. Then I realized it was some kind of new markup language. That day, I discovered that the university was working on its first website.

Back then web pages were all HTML and modern graphical web browsers hadn’t even been invented. Eventually, there was Mosaic on X Windows, but undergraduate students at YSU didn’t really have access to that. That first YSU website ended up being character-based. That was such a long time ago.

Those early websites were so simple that you could create a web page with a text editor. Over the span of three decades, the process of creating web pages went from dead simple to nearly impossible. Since the 1990s the underlying technology for creating web pages (HTML, CSS, Javascript, et al.) has become so complicated that it’s not approachable.

Today web pages are often packaged into templates and used with a content management system or DIY website builder to create websites. These apps hide all that complexity from us and handle all the technical details. We no longer need to understand all the different web technologies. DIY website builders make it possible to visually create your own website.

Building a website is now something that nontechnical people can do for themselves.

Technology never stops solving problems. This is a pattern I’ve seen before. The desktop publishing revolution in the mid-1980s comes to mind. Before this time, publishing a good-looking report or printing business cards was something you needed to subcontract to a print shop. Today it’s something you can do for yourself. Technology helps people do more for themselves.

There are even no-code and low-code options for software development. Application development and web development are finally inching their way towards being a DIY process. Webflow is an example of a tool that hides most of the technical details and scripting associated with designing and building a custom website.

I have been saying for a while that hand-coding applications is ridiculous and a big source of unnecessary complexity in software development. The very beginnings of great tools to automate and eventually eliminate most hand-coded applications are finally beginning to emerge.

Another reason that DIY website building has become more attainable is that website design has evolved, over time, to become less convoluted. Websites today are less laden with graphic elements. Web pages are flatter with fewer hard edges and utilize repetitive grid constructs for layout. Fonts and color schemes are emphasized more. Images are of central importance. Standardized design methodologies like Google’s Material Design and Apple's Flat Design underscore the shift to a minimalist aesthetic.

These minimalist design trends with soft edges and delicate color pallets and with simple layouts are easy to package into website templates that can then be utilized to quickly build new DIY websites. Grid layouts with text and images and with the occasional icon or other graphic flourish are easy to modify to your needs. In a nutshell, it’s pretty easy to create a good-looking website today.

Let's assume for a minute that regular people can create websites. Why would they want to? Maybe to have more control or to save money or to save time. Getting a website created by an agency can be a significant expense for a newly established business. Keeping a site up to date can also be expensive. Beyond the cost, maybe some business owners would like to bypass the bureaucracy and just be able to get it done. Control is power, after all. That power can set you free to evolve your company website as you see fit.

DIY websites are probably best suited for small companies that don’t have a big budget for a website and marketing. I think sometimes medium-sized companies also benefit from a DIY approach because it allows the marketing department to bypass the software development team and control the site creation process. Less time spent in meetings discussing bit-twiddling details with techies equals more time to focus on marketing and sales strategies. This may sound cynical, but the technological advancements that make DIY website creation possible can be empowering to business leaders.

DIY website builders like Squarespace, Wix, Webflow, and others do have a learning curve. I guess the best way to describe it is to say that they have made it possible for non-technical users to create websites, but they haven’t necessarily made it easy. You just need to understand that it’s going to take some time and effort to learn how to use these tools.

I’ve already said that I worked for a few years as a software developer. One of the things you have to accept as a developer is that you will never know everything and that you will forever be learning new things. Research and learning new things are just part of the job.

Using these website builders is kind of like that. You will need to learn new things and overcome challenges. It’s not as complicated as software development, but you do need to accept that you will often not know how to do things and have to dig in and find the answers to challenges that will spring up.

We can never know how to solve all the problems that will arise in our lives. What we have to do is develop a good set of skills for problem-solving. We need to know how to find answers to these challenges that will inevitably arise when we are trying to create a new website.

Products like Squarespace, for example, have great documentation, but you need to know how to use it effectively. Google will be your greatest resource of all when trying to solve problems.

Learning, after all, is a lifelong process.

I worked for a lot of years with information systems. I’ve been interested even longer in the transformation and communication of information. One of the most important things websites do is communicate information to visitors. When Google reviews your website as part of its indexing process, they’re looking for information. They are not going to rate your color scheme or judge your font choices. To me, the website publishing process is first a process of transformation. Expert insider knowledge about your company's products or services is transformed to suit your customer’s needs, and this information must also be presented in formats appropriate for publication on the web. Appearance absolutely does matter for a website, but I don't think it’s the most important element.

After a lot of years working with information technology, I finally have some time to explore and better understand some of the latest technologies being used to publish websites and create web apps using low-code and no-code methods. Learning really is a lifelong process, and I’m very fortunate to be able to make this personal investment in self-growth at this point in my life. I look forward to discovering new technologies that simplify publishing on the web and sharing my knowledge.

There are already a bunch of website builder review sites. I can’t possibly compete with them, nor do I intend to. Instead, I’ll address more broadly the many challenges you may encounter when creating a DIY site.

Thank you for sticking around to the end of this examination of DIY website publishing and what motivates me to understand it. Please consider bookmarking this site and returning again in the future.

Best regards,

Sam Fenstermacher

Sam here. I spotted this article about Canva’s introduction of new AI-powered design tools on The Verve and thought it was newsworthy, considering how many Artificial Intelligence technology announcements there have been lately in the fields of graphic design and the visual arts.

Among the many impressive features announced by Canva today are AI-powered brand management and AI-powered copywriting. A couple of days ago Adobe Systems unveils (in beta) Firefly, a family of new creative generative AI. Last but not least, OpenAI introduced DALL-E and DALL-E 2 their descriptive art and image creation tools a while ago.

Bill Gates lately declared that AI will be as transformational as the internet and smartphones. I’m not posting this just because of the Canva announcement. These new AI-powered tools and others that are yet to emerge will change the way we create and manipulate art going forward. So, I’m really just name-dropping some of the new technologies for the benefit of anyone interested in exploring the future of graphic design and image creation/manipulation.

Canva, if you don’t know, is a tool that opens up the potential of graphic design to the masses. In the very visual world we live in today, that’s a very valuable trick.

The company founders created Canva based on the visionary idea that just about anyone should be able to design anything. They have delivered on that idea and in the process created a company valued at something like 40 billion dollars.

Adobe Systems released Create Cloud Express, an offering that is similar to Canva, at the end of 2021. Many reviews of this new product from Adobe suggest that it’s in response to the success of the competitive product Canva. I only mention this to underscore the difference between these two companies.

Adobe is a mature company with a broad and also, in some cases, dated line of products. Some of their graphic design tools like Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign date back to the 20th Century. These applications had their hour of glory decades ago, and for a very long time have been kept up to date with incremental changes. Incremental change is a big part of Adobe’s business model. Adobe Systems’ release of Creative Cloud Express is an incremental response to the competitive challenge posed by Canva.

Canva, on the other hand, is a young company with innovative new ideas. By democratizing design, they have opened up the field of design to the average user. You no longer need a graphic designer to create the mundane visual elements of modern business. Making graphic design much easier and more accessible to the masses, as Canva has, is an example of transformational change.

Both companies provide value to their customers. The Adobe legacy tools are a good fit for graphic design professionals who have spent years perfecting their design skills. Canva, on the other hand, is the tool of choice for creative individuals who just want to get the job done.

This is sort of a clash between the past and the future. On the one hand, you have the legacy tools and the people that use them, and they purport that design is something that takes years to learn and regular people can’t do it. And, on the other hand, you have the new breed of tools that leverage new technologies and new approaches to simplify graphic design so that it’s something that regular people can do for themselves.

Canva is part of a trend now to transform and simplify technical challenges. Part of a whole new breed of DIY software app that empowers consumers. Another example of this kind of empowering tool is the website creation tool Squarespace. Yet another example of this class of tool would be Webflow, a no-code tool for visually designing websites.

Collectively, these tools empower consumers and entrepreneurs to do more of the technical work of creating a website or a social media presence themselves, and in the process, they can bypass the professional designers and developers that sometimes present an additional challenge to the successful completion of a website project.

In the case of Canva, innovation is also valuable. As the article states, the company is valued at 40 billion dollars.

Sony is now the official imaging products provider for Gannett's 250 national and local outlets, including USA Today.

It was only a few months ago that I read that PA, the UK’s largest news agency, had switched to Sony cameras. And, then in 2020 the Associated Press partners with Sony to exclusively provide its visual journalists with Sony camera gear.

Reading the linked articles below I see two big reasons that these large organizations with the budget to do their research chose Sony: product innovation and video capabilities. Sony definitely can innovate, and some of their new cameras definitely push the limits of what is possible. Take for example the Sony Xperia PRO-I Camera Phone. Their innovation also extends to video and cinema cameras. Given the reality of the times we live in, the importance of video is substantial. All these news agencies also spoke to the great support they get from Sony.

https://www.dpreview.com/news/9739857608/sony-official-imaging-products-provider-gannett-250-outlets-including-usa-today

The UK’s Largest News Agency Just Switched to Sony Cameras

https://petapixel.com/2021/08/20/the-uks-largest-news-agency-just-switched-to-sony-cameras/

The Associated Press partners with Sony to exclusively provide its visual journalists with Sony camera gear.

https://www.dpreview.com/news/8983805391/ap-partners-with-sony-to-exclusively-provide-its-visual-journalists-with-sony-camera-gear

The Camera Phone Democratizes Photography

I’ve been thinking lately that photography is going through a phase of transformational change, and that change is being driven by smartphone popularity, consumer demand, and new technology. I ran across this article a couple of weeks ago about how smartphones are the Future of Photography: If Mirrorless Is the Future of the Camera, then the Smartphone Is the Future of Photography. 

The article makes some interesting points about how camera sales have not declined in recent years when you consider the number of phone sales. Their analogy of phones now to the Kodak Brownie cameras in the early Twentieth Century is illustrative. Phones are democratizing photography now much like the Kodak Brownie did in the 1920's and 1930's.

In the article they also make some interesting points about the popularity of phones as a photography tool. About the scale of change brought on by the massive sales of smartphones over the last several years they say that: “It's perhaps self-evident that the smartphone has all but killed the camera industry, but the scale and enormity of putting a camera in the hands of 7.5 billion people or about 96% of the global population is truly astonishing.” 

Younger people routinely use their phones as cameras. For them the phone in their pocket is their camera. They don’t have a metal and plastic cube with a lens attached to the front of it stuffed away in a drawer somewhere. It’s just their phone, that’s it. I think the difference goes further though, because younger people use cameras differently and to a different end. The massive popularity of Social Media and the way young, and sometimes not so young, people consume it has redefined what popular photography is. I should say here that a lot of commercial photography work is also targeting social media these days, so that form of photography is also changing.

Photography, and for that matter, many other aspects of communication in the age of social media needs to be more immediate. The pictures you took last week are from the distant past. You need to post to social media the picture you captured 10 minutes ago. Immediacy is important.  In addition, video is a great tool for telling stories, and It fits nicely into the social ecosystem.

According to a recent article on PetaPixel: “Nikon will expand its strategy to try and appeal to “young customers” through entry-level camera models that have lower prices and video-centric features. Additionally, the company says that it plans to provide software that supports the creation of video.” So even old school camera companies like Nikon are changing their business model to gain new relevance in the age of social media as a primary outlet for visual artists. Sounds like they are coming out with a  video-focused vlogging camera in 2022.

More recently OM Digital Solutions, the camera maker formally known as Olympus, “has also teased an upcoming interchangeable lens Micro Four Thirds camera that it claims will leverage ‘the use of computational photographic technology.’” So, OM Systems, a maker of more or less traditional cameras, is working to integrate computational photography technology into its newest products. It seems fair to say they are adapting to new demands in the market for photographic equipment. 

The New DJI Action 2 Looks to be Amazing 

Earlier this week technology company DJI introduced a new action camera. The new DJI Action 2 looks to be absolutely amazing. The new cameras, like this one and others, that have modern hardware and computational photography features can do amazing things. I feel like imaging is at a point of transformation right now. Phones and cameras like this one, for example, capture great still images and video and they both integrate easily with social media workflows. 

Lets face it, most of us are shooting for social media anyway, so what good is a camera that doesn't fit into the social ecosystem? If you are not doing commercial photography work that requires big heavy expensive cameras, then why bother with them? These bulky old school cameras are becoming less relevant in the age of pervasive social media presence. They don't satisfy the most common imaging needs of today. This is what I mean by a point of transformation. Times change and needs change. Use the right tool for the job. Buy a good quality phone and use it for your photos and videos. If you need to up your video game a little bit, cameras like the DJI Osmo series camera’s or the new and capable Sony vlogging cameras and phones could be your best bet. 

DJI Seems to be Completely Disrupting the Non-smartphone Consumer Camera Market.

This recent post from the Yanko Design website about the new DJI Action 2 camera makes some interesting points. "Drone and gimbal makers extraordinaire, DJI seems to be completely disrupting the non-smartphone consumer camera market. The OM, Osmo, and Pocket give you a set of really powerful stabilized on-ground recording capabilities..." Traditional camera makers have been losing point and shoot camera sales to phone makers for years. Now technology companies like DJI are cutting into the non-smartphone consumer camera market. Changing consumer needs make this market ripe for innovation. 

So photography and photography gear are changing to better suit the social lifestyle and also to leverage new technologies to simplify producing great still images and videos. For consumers it’s a great time to be a photographer. For camera makers it’s a bit of a challenge now because they need to adapt and create new products better suited to the demands of the camera market of today. I absolutely wish them the best of luck, and I can’t wait to see what new products come to market in the next year or two.

Squarespace is a great option for people wanting to create their own website, but the initial learning curve can be a little steep. I know that I struggled with it for a while myself. When you know absolutely nothing about the tools you are using, you are bound to struggle.

To get started with Squarespace a year or so ago, I purchased the book Building Business Websites with Squarespace 7 by Miko Coffey, and I read the first six or seven chapters. This book is great, but unfortunately it's now out of date since Squarespace has moved on to version 7.1.

In all honesty, I don’t recommend buying a book. I also don’t think much of the many online tutorials out there. They are long drawn out serial sequences that take too much time to work through, and the ones I’m aware of also cost money. I can’t recommend paying money to be bored to death. The real problem though is not the money, It’s the time it takes to work your way through the whole drawn out process.

For me, I think it’s much better to just bite the bullet and to dig into Squarespace and figure it out. I have worked for a few years writing computer code. Over time I think I must have learned at least a dozen different programming languages. A time or two I did read the book and go through a formal training process. Most of the time though I just rooted around until I found out enough about the language to understand the basics and dove head first into the creation process. In a perfect world it’s not what you would want, but sometimes reality requires more of us and we have to push on through the learning curve and just get it done.

I suspect that many of the people determined to create their own website using Squarespace are entrepreneurs starting a business of their own. Correct me if I’m wrong, isn’t starting a business a tall order and a hell of a challenge. With so much to do, why not just dig in and get it done.

What I’m going to do with the rest of this article is identify some good starting point resources from the Squarespace Help support area intended for the beginner. Nothing too massive. Just kind of what I think is a good way to build a basic foundation of knowledge about the tools and methods of creating a website with Squarespace. And then I’m going to outline what I think is the way you should learn to use Squarespace to build your first website. This is the way I actually figured out Squarespace myself. I really believe the way to learn Squarespace, and a lot of other things for that matter, is to just do it!

Here are the four links I like right now in January of 2021. Keep in mind that a year from now these may not be great resources.

The first one is the no brainer. It’s the top level page for Squarespace Help. There’s a wealth of information here. One really great thing about Squarespace is that they take the time to document what they build.

https://support.squarespace.com/hc/en-us

My next link is to the Getting Started with Squarespace Video Series. I realize many folks like to learn by seeing. That’s what this video series is for. Don’t spend too much time with this. It’s too easy. BTW, if you are building a website on Squarespace in 2021, you are interested in version 7.1 templates.

https://support.squarespace.com/hc/en-us/articles/205809798-Video-Series-Getting-Started-with-Squarespace

The third link and my first recommended reading for the beginner is Getting Around Squarespace in the Getting Started Guide. This section contains some foundational information that you will use over and over going forward.

https://support.squarespace.com/hc/en-us/articles/212260078

The next link I’m recommending is the Pages and Content Basics section in the Getting Started Help Guide. The information in the Pages and Content section (menu on the left) of the Getting Started Help Guide will help you with tasks in the Pages section of the Squarespace site builder. This is a place where you will be spending a lot of time, so pay attention.

https://support.squarespace.com/hc/en-us/articles/206795137

Ok, think of the page links above as homework. After a little bit of studying, you should be ready to dig in and start creating pages using Squarespace. I already said that the way to learn to use Squarespace is to, well, use Squarespace. Here’s the gist of how to do that in just a few sentences.

Create a new Squarespace account. This will take about a minute if you have an email address and a password in mind. You start this process by clicking on the Get Started button in the upper right corner of the Squarespace homepage. https://www.squarespace.com/ If you already have a Squarespace account, you may want to create a second account with a different email address for experimenting.

In the account you just created, pick a template you like and create a new trial site. This will walk you through the process of creating a new site. You can skip all but the first couple questions because this is going to be a learning experiment, not a real website.

Now dig into the Pages area of the site you just created. Change text, add a section, change an image, add a page and rename it and add it to the menu, and on and on. This is your opportunity to figure out how everything works. If you get stuck, go back to the Squarespace Help pages and try to figure out how to get it done.

When you start to get a feel for how the Pages area works, dig into the Design area, and for that matter the rest of the areas in the menu on the left of the website builder.

The beauty of what you are doing is that it’s all zero risk. If you break something, and you probably will, you are not in trouble. If you can’t fix the mistake you make, stop for a minute to understand what you did wrong and to learn from it, then delete that trial site and start over with a new trial. You set out to learn how to use the website builder tools, not to create a real site. The few hours you spend now learning how everything works will pay off in multiples later when you're working on your real website project.

When you start to feel confident in your ability to get things done, move on to your real project. First though, clean up the trials sites you created while experimenting and learning. Better to delete them now rather than later when you might have real websites mixed in that would be a disaster to delete by accident.

Lets recap. You should read up a little bit about Squarespace to establish a foundation of knowledge. Next, create an account for experimentation and learn how everything works. Finally, when you are comfortable that you understand how to use all the tools, go ahead and start on your real website project confident that you know what you are doing.

I hope you find some value in this article and that you will come back and tell us about your future successes using Squarespace. I genuinely wish you the best of luck. I know you can do it. That really is the trick. If you can envision yourself succeeding, you ultimately will.

Sam

I recently created a new website for Ken and Anne Murray at Workhorse Ranch & Olde Tyme Carriage Company. Their existing website, which I had created for them seven years ago, was still working but in need of an update. Over the last several years the focus of their business had also changed, and the old website did not reflect the reality of their current business operations.

I suggested Squarespace as a good home for their new Web presence. Anne was actually already aware of Squarespace and was receptive to that idea. Looking at Squarespace templates, we considered several including: Lusaka, Almara, Clarkson, Bailard, Colima, and Nolan. In the end Clarkson was chosen as the starting point for the new site, and it really did work out quite well. In general, Squarespace templates are built to work for small business websites, and they delivered on this project. The content for the new site worked really well in this template.

I worked with Anne and Ken to produce the page copy for the site and helped select images for the new site from the many photos they had from decades in the horse and carriage business. Their primary business focus, on the new site, was: horse-drawn funeral service, holiday rides in Southlake Town Square, and wedding services with an emphasis on Asian weddings.

Anne wanted a simple website that was focused on their core business areas. I think that she hit on an important point: simple is really critical on a small business website. We worked hard together to craft a clean and simple website that tells the story of their business services and showcased the many images they have from decades in the horse and carriage business.

I had a great time creating this second website for Workhorse Ranch and Olde Tyme Carriage Company owners Ken and Anne Murray. It was very kind of them to trust me to create a second website for them. I believe with a little routine maintenance, this new website will help their business keep growing over the next several years.

https://www.workhorseranch.com/

A few weeks ago I finished a small website job where the challenge wasn’t to make a new site but instead to do away with the existing website.

In this Covid-19 pandemic many small businesses are having to call it quits. That was the story of this job. The business was not making money and needed to conserve cash and wind down operations. They didn’t need the website and didn’t want to pay for another year of hosting and maintenance.

The website and the domain name in question were hosted at Bluehost. For whatever reason the owner wanted to sever all relations with Bluehost. So, the domain name needed to be transfered. Cost was also a consideration.

Moving domains names around can be pretty technical. I was pleasantly surprised how easy the process went this time. What I decided to do was transfer the domain to Google Domains, https://domains.google/, and then set up a Google My Business account, https://www.google.com/business/, for the customer’s business. Releasing the domain for transfer on the Bluehost end was a little complicated, but they did have helpful information that explained the process. On the Google Domains end the process simply could not have been easier. Google My Business is intended to be an end user product. No technical skills required. Infact, once the domain name was transferred to Google, linking it to the Google My Business account was as simple as clicking a button. 

So, in the end the domain name ends up in the owner’s Google account and pointing at their Google My Business account. It really is a win win. The total cost is something like $12 a year and it’s the best domain parking situation I could possibly imagine for a business owner who has ideas about starting over again someday. The process is so simple that a non-technical person should be able to handle the whole thing. Best of luck if you decide to give it a try.

This photo project started in Cleburne Texas, on the 4th Of July 2019, with pictures of the American and Texas flags, and it ended on October 10, 2019 with a slice of pizza at the Shot Tower Inn on Locust Street in Dubuque Iowa.

This past Summer I made a big change. I sold my home in Cleburne Texas and moved, with my wife Susan, to Dubuque Iowa. I had lived in Cleburne, which is basically a suburb of the Dallas Fort Worth Metroplex, for decades. This decision to move to Iowa was not without risk, and the biggest life change I had made in a very very long time. It was sort of like passing through a one way door. I knew that there was no going back.

I decided to start a 100 day photo project at the beginning of this journey. I called this photo project Transition. The Transition photo project was intended partly to create a visual record of the change, but it was also a creative awakening.

It’s so easy to let the days slip by you. You live, but you don’t live in the moment. You see but you don’t see with clarity or depth or understanding.

In the documentary film “Dorothea Lange: Grab a Hunk of Lightning,” the film’s director and narrator, Dyanna Taylor, describes a conversation she had, as a child, with her Grandmother, Dorothea Lange. Lange suggested to her granddaughter that the process of seeing was more than cursory observation of physical objects. Lange suggested that seeing is the process of observation and also a state of awareness.

Sometimes we see but we aren’t aware of our surroundings. We see but without emotional or intellectual depth. We miss these additional dimensions. This photo project was also an effort, on my part, to see and appreciate the many facets of change occurring around me and to understand and internalize the experience.

Having the pictures to look at is nice too.

I recently created a new website for Brazos Carriage Company. They had an existing website that really was not all that old, but they had had some trouble with site performance and wanted something reliable and a little more modern.

We settled on Squarespace because it’s a stable and reliable platform, and then we decided to start with the Moksha template. The logo from their previous website worked well on the new website after just a minor tweak, and the banner image was something they already had. Some of the organization for the homepage actually came from the old site. It was really a pleasant surprise how quickly the site layout came together.  

The Squarespace template was really well organized for this sort of website. Each section of the homepage made a natural funnel to the topical page where the individual service is explained and, in some cases, available for sale.

I had a great time creating this new website for Brazos Carriage Company owner Tracy Pratt. I believe the site will serve their business well for several years. Thank you Tracy for the opportunity to be of service.  

Sam Fenstermacher

I had to create a Soap web service program recently. I work in a shop that uses Cobol as the primary development language. My options were dictated by that requirement. Rather than write something from scratch, I rummaged around and found the skeleton of a program that was much like what I needed to create. A major lucky break for me.

In this program that I recycles I found a real gem for True/False condition testing.

The closest thing Cobol has to a boolean data type is the 88-level entry codes entered in the Date Division. These 88-level entries, known as condition-names, are Cobol True/False condition test shortcuts. I have always thought they were a little clunky and didn’t use them unless they seemed especially appropriate.

To review, if you code in the Data Division something like:

   05 Marital-Status     PIC X.

       88  Single            VALUE  “s”.

Then in the Procedure Division you can code something like:

       MOVE "s" TO Marital-Status

       IF Single

           Do something…

Instead of

       MOVE "s" TO Marital-Status

       IF Marital-Status = “s”

           Do something...

I have always thought the latter is more transparent and less complicated. You can see that the result of a condition-name is always a true/false value. Cobol doesn’t really have a boolean data type. So these condition-codes and also the True/False condition test in the Evaluate statement is all you get.

What I found in this skeleton program that I started out this article talking about was a use of 88-level entries that incorporated the SET statement to produce a cleaner True/False condition test. Here’s an example.

So, in the Data Division you start with something like:

   01  Pgm-State            PIC x.

       88  End-Pgm             VALUE 'Y' FALSE 'N'.

This establishes the condition-name End-Pgm with a value of “Y” and “N” representing False.

Then in your initialization code you will set the value of this condition to a known state of False.

    SET End-Pgm TO FALSE

Now, in the Procedure Division you can set and evaluate this condition-name as needed.

    READ FileName

    INVALID KEY

       SET End-Pgm TO TRUE…

Later in the program…

    IF End-Pgm GOBACK.

I guess what I liked about this approach is how the code is so explicit. Not only is the result of the evaluation always either true or false, but so are the underlying values, and you are explicitly setting the condition-name to either True or False. It’s so much clearer as you are auditing code and trying to figure out how things work.

Stumbling on to this bit of code was a real stroke of luck for me. I will use this method again when I find myself needing to track program states that can be either true or false. I hope you find it code sample useful too.

On day one I started out with the knowledge gained from reading the first six chapters in the Miko Coffey book Building Business Websites with Squarespace 7, and also having read a bunch of blog posts in the Elle & Company website. Both of these are great resources, by the way.

In spite of all that background research, I still couldn’t figure out how to do much of anything. That seems to be the way it works with technology. There is no avoiding the painful learning curve.

The view from the Site Manager led me to believe that you could change page attributes by interacting directly with the web page. And, to a limited extent, that’s how it works. To make many changes though, you need to use the menu system. From the Site Manager Home menu you need to navigate to the Pages menu and then in the Main Navigation section click on the Gear Icon to activate the Page Settings panel. In this panel I found all the settings I thought would be accessible with Right-clicks or Mouse-overs from the actual web page I was trying to modify.

To be fair, the Miko Coffey book does discuss this fundamental operation. It’s on page 93 after she has been talking about template selection for dozens of pages, and in the context of creating new pages. I have to tell you that I, and I think many other people, would like to kick the tires a little bit and dig into the theme settings before finalizing theme choices.

This may have by now started sounding like a rant. It’s not. It’s more of an observation on how inevitable this sort of thing is with technology. With Squarespace and so many other products like it, the complexities are overlapping. One way or another you are going to get caught up in the web of complexity.

At work recently I’ve been using XSLT to process XML documents. XSLT is a programming language with a formalized syntax. You can study it and read books about it. The language grammar is easy enough to understand. What’s not so easy to master is the semantics of the language. Often, it doesn’t work the way you expect. The semantics aren’t what you anticipated. The program you write is grammatically correct, it just doesn’t do what you wanted it to do.

My day one experience with Squarespace has an element of semantic mismatch. I was thinking it worked one way, when the designers of the system had something different in mind. With software, complexity is multifaceted. When you’re starting out, you are going to struggle. It’s unavoidable. I’ve been through this learning curve thing so many times now that I have come to accept it. Not enjoy it, just accept it. The trick is to shrug it off and move on to day two.

If you move on to day two and day three, you will have made it to a place so many others never get to experience. Persistence pays off. Web design and software development are not for everyone. If you have the patients to stick it out and wait for the lines to connect the dots, for things to come together and make sense, you may find some joy in the end results you product. My advice is to not give up too early. Best of luck.