Squarespace
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Google unexpectedly sells its domain-hosting business to Squarespace
Squarespace has entered an agreement to purchase Google's domain business. The company expects to acquire approximately 10 million domains. The deal is expected to close in Q3 2023.
Squarespace is getting into video subscriptions
Another big platform is adding video to its offering.
Squarespace now lets customers add paywalls to their sites
The “Members Area” is available now as an add-on to any Squarespace subscription, with plans starting at $9 a month.
The best website builder for small businesses
By Kevin Purdy This post was done in partnership with Wirecutter. When readers choose to buy Wirecutter's independently chosen editorial picks, Wirecutter and Engadget may earn affiliate commission. Read the full website builder guide here. After researching 17 of the top website-building services and hosts, building 20 websites with seven of the most promising ones, and changing hundreds of little things on each page, we believe Wix is the best way for a small business to put up a professional-looking website. Its templates, setup interview, and editing tools create modern, clean-looking sites that you can easily customize, and adding crucial tools like contact forms or restaurant menus is easier than with other website-building tools. Wix's customer support is reliable, its free trial is generous, and its pricing is clear and fair for small businesses. Beyond the basics of site editing, Wix offers a wealth of plug-ins for adding Google Maps, OpenTable, appointment booking, and other tools to your website. Its search engine optimization tools are easy to understand and use, and thanks to Wix's size and scale, your site should remain reliable and available even under heavy traffic. Weebly lacks the variety of templates that Wix provides, and it can't automatically build you a site by asking you about your business. But Weebly's editing interface is simpler and provides less room for error with its drag-and-drop boxes. Weebly also (paradoxically) offers deeper access to the code behind your site, but has fewer useful plug-ins and forms from the start. You should try Weebly if you can't find a template or generated site you like on Wix, if you want to make some specific changes to your site using code (or a code-savvy helper), or if price is the most important factor for you, as the Starter package for Weebly costs one-third less than Wix's comparable Combo package. Every designer we spoke with specifically recommended Shopify for any business that's looking to sell goods online. Although our top picks have built-in ecommerce tools, it makes more sense for most businesses to use Shopify, or at least its Lite version, and embed Shopify's tools into their websites—Shopify works with both of our top picks, and you won't be locked in if you decide to change your site later.
Netflix and Hulu already won 21 Emmys ahead of the main event
The Creative Arts Emmy Awards took place this weekend and both Netflix and Hulu put on a good showing. Netflix raked in 16 awards while Hulu programming took in five -- a positive preview for how each streaming service will fare during the primetime Emmy Awards, which will take place on September 17th. Overall, Netflix was at the top of the winner's list, coming in second to HBO.
Neo-Nazi site Stormfront has been temporarily taken down
The post-Charlottesville removal of neo-Nazi content from various web sources continues to power on as the long-standing website Stormfront has, for now, been taken down. A Whois search shows that Web.com domain provider Network Solutions LLC has put a hold on the website and as the Knoxville News Sentinel reports, the hold prohibits the site from being updated, transferred or deleted. If the domain provider decides to delete Stormfront, any subsequent version hosted elsewhere would have to be recreated from scratch.
Squarespace pulls hate sites from its web hosting service
The post-Charlottesville crackdown on internet hate speech is expanding at a very rapid pace. Squarespace, the web design and hosting service, has revealed to The Verge that it's removing a "group of sites" for violating its policy banning advocacy of bigotry and hate. The company isn't saying which sites are getting the axe, but it's giving the affected producers 48 hours' notice before their pages vanish.
Apple Pay now works with Squarespace sites
If you have a Squarespace site that you're using to sell your wares, your online store can now accept Apple Pay via the iPhone and the upcoming macOS Sierra. Now visitors can buy stuff without digging out their credit card.
Twitter, Reddit and more file brief to support Apple vs the FBI (update)
Several tech companies have voiced support for Apple in its battle with the FBI over iPhone encryption. Today, lawyers for a group of 16 companies, including Twitter, filed a brief formally backing Cupertino in regards to the case. The group also includes Airbnb, eBay, GitHub, Kickstarter, LinkedIn, Reddit, Square and Squarespace, among others. In the brief, the group explains that its members "regularly assist in law-enforcement investigations" and look to make sure "government requests for user data are made within the bounds of applicable laws."
Squarespace improves its website-management tools with two new iOS apps, two updates
If you use Squarespace for your website, you'll want to meander into the iOS App Store and check out the new and updated apps recently added by the website-hosting service. The suite of apps will allow you to blog, check metrics, view galleries and take notes on your iPhone and iPad. The new and updated apps include: Squarespace Blog [iOS universal; new] -- This new app allows you to draft, edit, post, schedule and review posts on the go. You can also monitor and manage comments on your blog. Squarespace Metrics [iPhone; new] -- Squarespace Metrics allows you to monitor the most important website analytics like page views and unique visitors as well as projections and charts. The app also tracks social followers on Twitter and Facebook. Squarespace Portfolio [iOS universal; updated] -- Squarespace Portfolio is a companion app that syncs your galleries to your iPhone or iPad. The latest version has been rebuilt for iOS 7 and now supports video from Vimeo and YouTube. Squarespace Note [iPhone; updated] -- Squarespace Note is a minimalist note-taking app that allows you to quickly jot down your thoughts. The latest version brings stability improvements for iOS 7. You can download one or all of them for free from the iOS App Store. Squarespace Blog, Metrics and Portfolio require a Squarespace 6 account.
Squarespace introduces Squarespace Note
Web hosting provider Squarespace has a new app out, but it's not what you might think it is. Rather than an update or completely new version of the Squarespace app, the company has released Squarespace Note, a free app to help people "record their ideas on the fly." The app provides a fast way to write down ideas on an iOS device, loading a blank white piece of virtual paper upon launch. Once you've written a note, it can be synced to Squarespace, email, Dropbox, Twitter, Facebook and Evernote. Everything you need to do can usually be done with a single swipe in one direction or another -- it's a very clean UI. %Gallery-169312% For Squarespace users, the Squarespace sync can be quite handy. If you have some ideas for a blog post, just enter them into your iPhone (you can use Siri dictation if your iPhone is capable), sync with an upward swipe and those ideas are turned into a draft post, ready for you to edit. More than one service can be marked as a "default" so that when you swipe up to send, the note goes to (for example) Squarespace, email, Dropbox and Evernote with one gesture. Dropbox users will find that the app creates a Squarespace Note folder in the Apps folder, and notes can be saved to one large file or separate files. All notes can be marked with a location and are time and date stamped. Linking accounts has been made drop-dead easy; often, just dragging a note icon onto another icon takes care of the setup. I was impressed with just how incredibly usable this app is, and since it works with all of the services I use, I think it's a keeper.
Squarespace iOS app updated for v6 of web hosting tool
Squarespace recently updated its website hosting platform to version 6; the update includes new templates, an improved layout engine and better social integration. The company added a total of 50 new features to the platform. To accompany this change, Squarespace also updated its iPhone and iPad app to support version 6. The Squarespace app lets you manage most aspects of your website from your mobile device. You can create and edit posts, add photos and even manage comments. The app also lets you preview your site on your phone and check your traffic stats on the go. Besides support for Squarespace 6, the latest version of the iOS app has a handful of undisclosed bug fixes. You can download the Squarespace iPhone app and the iPad app from the iOS App Store for free. Though the app is free, Squarespace is a monthly paid service. You can read more about Squarespace 6 on Squarespace's blog. #next_pages_container { width: 5px; hight: 5px; position: absolute; top: -100px; left: -100px; z-index: 2147483647 !important; }
Squarespace iPad app brings blog editing joy to subscribers
Anyone who is familiar with the Squarespace hosted blog service knows how great it is. Themes are professionally designed and give bloggers an opportunity to tweak them for unique sites with beautiful typography, and the service keeps providing more and more capabilities to subscribers. Squarespace service starts at anywhere from US$13 to $40 per month, with discounts for pre-paying for multiple years. The latest gift from the company is Squarespace for iPad (free), which arrived yesterday and was touted in the Official Squarespace Blog. Like most of the other Squarespace products and services, the user interface design is top notch and the editor looks fantastic. With some of the other blog editors available for iPad and iPhone, bloggers often need to depart from the editor in order to perform an action. The Squarespace app designers have used the wide open spaces of the iPad screen to let bloggers tag, categorize and create excerpts without leaving the editor, and a quick tap on a post or comment now displays a tray underneath the post containing action options. The Squarespace web editor is one of the better blog editors I've ever used, and a lot of that editor is included in the iPad app. There are four editing modes -- Text, Markdown, Textile and RAW HTML -- and you can change text styles, insert photos and links and set excerpts in any of those modes. Undo and redo buttons are always within sight if you happen to delete or change your blog work inadvertently. A short video highlighting the major features of the Squarespace app in action follows on the next page, with some cheerful mariachi music that will make your day.
MarsEdit 3 adds rich text editing, enhanced media browsing
In the "send an email, post a blog entry" fun and fast-paced world of tomorrow, services like Tumblr and Posterous make it exceedingly simple to prepare and post to your blog; meanwhile, Twitter, Facebook and AOL Lifestream push past the article metaphor to 140-character status snippets. Delightful as they all may be, sometimes it's nice to have a well-rounded Mac app that supports more reflective and considerate writing for your online outlets -- not to mention one that saves your drafts in case your browser picks that particular moment to crash. For a lot of bloggers, including many TUAW veterans, Red Sweater's MarsEdit (US$39.95) is that app. It allows you to write, edit and schedule posts offline at leisure, with full preview capability so you know what you're getting when you hit the Publish button. It will happily upload your images and files alongside your posts, and it works with scores of popular and obscure blog back-end systems (WordPress, TypePad, Tumblr, Squarespace, etc.). If you prefer to edit elsewhere but still want the uploading savvy MarsEdit delivers, it plays nicely (via the ODBEditor scritping suite) with other text editors like SubEthaEdit and TextMate. MarsEdit has just hit version 3.0. At long last, WYSIWIG rich text editing is included, alongside the traditional HTML/text edit window that has cheered experts but may have intimidated novices. Other new features include better syntax highlighting in HTML, support for WordPress static pages, media browsing from iPhoto/Aperture/Lightroom libraries, and more. You can download a 30-day trial of MarsEdit and see for yourself if it works the way you do. Upgrades for previous owners are free if you bought MarsEdit in 2010, and $14.95 for all earlier purchasers.
Squarespace hosting/CMS service launches iPhone app
After a long wait, Squarespace customers finally have an iPhone app of their own. Squarespace is a hosted blogging/CMS service that competes with the likes of WordPress.com and Typepad. Having used all three, I can say that interacting with Squarespace (posting, changing your site's look and feel, etc.) is unlike the others. Instead of a separate control panel/dashboard, Squarespace previews changes in real time on the same screen. It's really nice. The iPhone app [iTunes link] seems to be an extension of its browser-based sibling. For example, check out the live preview mode pictured at right. You can also manage multiple accounts, post, upload multiple images at once (awesome) view stats and more. The UI looks nice as well. While bloggers on other platforms have had compatible apps in the App Store for a while now, this is Squarespace's first solution. We're eager to play around with it. Squarespace for iPhone is free and requires a paid Squarespace account.
