This article is part of the weekly sponsorship. Many thanks to our friends at Squarespace for sponsoring us this week.
I still remember the early days of me using the internet on a Windows PC. I was on an ISP that offered a 64kbps plan as its “high speed” offering, Firefox was still relevant and widely used, and millions were still using Windows XP. I thought it would be fun to have my own little page on the internet and started looking around for ways to build my own website. I didn’t know HTML/CSS back then, so my options back then were either “googling” for “free website templates” or getting my hands on a copy of Macromedia Dreamweaver. After spending hours trying to settle on a decent template, I decided to instead try my hands at building my own little thing instead.
Although Dreamweaver was designed to help anyone build and publish a website, it did a piss poor job back then. You could add elements to a page by dragging and dropping them from a toolbar, they’d almost never be where you really wanted them to be. Moreover, the code that it generated was terrible and full of unnecessary trash. Thankfully, today there are services like Squarespace that help you build your own website, all while making it as easy as possible.
A couple of weeks ago, I undertook the task of revamping my old, single-page website and decided to add a portfolio to it to showcase some of the photos & videos resulting from my Canon 550D camera. I signed up for a 14-day trial on Squarespace and they were kind enough to hook me up with free account.
Squarespace helps you build beautiful and elegant websites without the need to know any coding at all. They offer hundreds of stunning & responsive templates to choose from as your starting point and you can customize them as you want. I was able to add a portfolio gallery to my website with a few simple clicks — the difficult part was deciding which photos & videos to actually upload to the website. It is just as easy to add a blog, pages, social integrations or even a full-fledged ecommerce store to your website with Squarespace.
Mobile Apps
Not only does Squarespace offer a fantastic service to build your website, they also offer some beautifully designed mobile apps to help you on the move. On iOS, Squarespace has a stunning app to help you blog as well as to keep a track of the traffic coming to your website. If you’re the creative kind, there’s a gorgeous app that lets you carry your portfolio around.
Although I’m still working on putting up my portfolio, it’s remarkable how easy Squarespace has made it so far. Integrating 3rd-party services like Typekit & Google Analytics or Social accounts like Facebook & Twitter is a breeze. All your edits happen on a realtime preview of your website and publishing the changes is as easy as clicking the ‘Save’ button.
Squarespace is a fantastic service and you should definitely give it a try. There’s a Free, 14-Day Trial available when you sign up (No credit card needed) and it only costs $8/month after that. What’s more, you even get a Free domain when you pay for the year.
Special Discount for BP Readers
Use the offer code BEAUTIFULPIXELS to get 10% off your first purchase.