What's the best Squarespace template for authors?
As you might have seen on the Squarespace website, they offer lots of different pre-built templates, all with their own specific look and feel. There are so many that sometimes it can get a bit overwhelming – when I ask my web design clients to take a look through the templates and let me know which they like best, a lot of the time they say they feel bamboozled and come back to me with the same question: ‘but which Squarespace template is best for authors?’
You might find lots of articles online suggesting answers to this question, but the way Squarespace works changed a few years ago, which means some of the answers you might read on older websites will now be redundant.
In 2019 Squarespace rolled out a new version of its platform: called Squarespace 7.1.
Squarespace 7.1 works in a completely different way from Squarespace 7.0, and one of the main differences is – you guessed it – the templates.
The difference between 7.0 and 7.1
Squarespace 7.1 is a more streamlined version of Squarespace, that aims to make it much easier for DIY designers to build their own websites.
If this is something you’re keen on doing, then my DIY Author Website Course is just for you →
Squarespace 7.1 makes it much easier to build long pages with different sections, and enables you to set a colour palette, which automatically sets up to 8 different colour schemes which you can use to quickly and easily style different sections on your website.
I’ll admit - I was NOT a fan of Squarespace 7.1 when it first arrived. I was very used to the way things worked in 7.0 and found the new version buggy and annoying.
However, the team at Squarespace have worked really hard to iron out all those initial teething problems, and now I absolutely love using 7.1. It enables me to build a simple website within a couple of hours - it’s really that quick!
There are tons of great new features in 7.1 that you don’t get in 7.0. Such as the ability to run online courses through your Squarespace website! (Like I do here 😉)
And on that note, if you have a Squarespace website and it’s built on version 7.0, then you can now easily upgrade the site to version 7.1 using their migration update tool.
I used this tool to upgrade this website and it worked like a dream.
How to move from Squarespace 7.0 to Squarespace 7.1 →
All about Squarespace templates
You’ll see that Squarespace still offers a huge host of different ‘templates’. Check them out here.
But here’s a little secret: from a functionality point of view, they are all the same.
In the old version of Squarespace (version 7.0), every template had slightly different functionality.
For example, some templates offered you the chance to use full bleed images across the top of your websites, others might have offered a sidebar, or a double footer, or the ability to use Index pages (which meant each page on your site had multiple sections).
So it did matter which template you picked, as you could easily find yourself halfway through building your new site and then realising that you couldn’t add a sidebar to your blog, or have full-width banner images.
However, in Squarespace 7.1, all the templates offer the same functionality.
In fact, they are not really templates in the same sense at all, but instead example websites with different fonts and styling.
This means that you can make any template from Squarespace 7.1 look exactly like another, just by swapping the content out and changing the styling options.
This is really good news! Because it means once you pick a template in Squarespace 7.1, you are not constrained at all by how the template looks or functions!
You can change all of it to suit your needs.
What most people do when picking a template
But of course, you still have to pick a template when you start to build your Squarespace website. So how do you do it?
You’ll notice that Squarespace has a little menu bar on its templates page, with lots of different categories.
Most people will navigate to the category they think best suits them, and then select a template from that.
There’s no specific category for authors and writers, so I find authors tend to navigate to the Blogs & Podcasts or Personal & CV categories and choose a template from there.
That’s fine of course, but it has one big downside…
Why using the template categories isn’t a great idea
Most DIY Squarespace designers end up choosing a template and then just swapping the content in the template with their own.
They don’t change the fonts or colours, or any of the styling options.
Sometimes they even try to force their content to ‘fit’ the template, without realising that they can delete elements like image or gallery blocks, and instead add the elements they need to make the most of their own content.
I understand why authors do this – Squarespace is amazing but it can be overwhelming if you’re not used to it.
Plus, y’know, it’s much quicker than building each page from scratch.
But what happens is this results in a website that looks pretty similar to the original template. And that’s fine – to a degree.
The problem starts when you realise that lots of authors are using the same templates, and that lots of their websites look very similar…
For example, with Squarespace 7.0 I saw tons of authors using the Bedford template (hands up if you were one of them!) and lots more using Native.
Many of these websites ended up looking really similar, which is such a shame. If you’re going to go to the effort of building your own site, it’s worth making it stand out from the crowd.
How to pick a Squarespace template for your author website
So, with all that in mind, how DO you go about picking the perfect Squarespace template for your author website?
First and foremost, remember again that with Squarespace 7.1, all templates are essentially the same.
So if you like the look of a full banner image on the homepage of one template, but much prefer the font of another, pick the one with the font you like – you’ll have to swap out the images anyway, but it’ll save you time if you don’t have to change the font.
I would browse through all the Squarespace templates available, ignoring the categories they try to pigeon-hole you into, and find the one that has the colours, fonts and styling you like the most.
Try to see past the content – as I said, you’ll be replacing it all with your own images and words anyway!
Instead, go for a template that has the ‘tone’ or ‘look and feel’ that you like best. This means when you start to build your author website, you won’t have to spend too much time adjusting your site style settings, but instead can focus on how best to present your content.
So, in response to the question ‘which is the best Squarespace template for authors?’ I can now give you the short answer:
The one you like the best!
Looking for help with your author website? Discover my web design packages here →
