Replacing existing SquareSpace site
April 15, 2019 5:35 PM   Subscribe

I'm building a SquareSpace site for a family member's business. I'm good enough with the site builder for my own purposes, but am wondering what the easiest way to create a site on behalf of someone else, and then replace the existing site, is.

Basically, my wife has an existing SquareSpace site. I'm working on creating a new one for her, also in SquareSpace, but I am not sure how to handle the "cut over" so that she doesn't lose any blog posts, domain information, and potentially analytics information, as well as avoid any kind of service interruption. Is there a way for me to create the site using my account and then transfer it to hers?

The site will be substantially different, but we want to keep the blog posts, mainly. Once I have created the new site, is there some easy way to automatically port it over to the existing site experience without losing anything?
posted by synecdoche to Computers & Internet (5 answers total) 3 users marked this as a favorite
 
Supposedly they have really good support; why not just call them and ask?
posted by RikiTikiTavi at 6:23 PM on April 15, 2019


As of last year, at least, SquareSpace didn't offer any way to even back up and restore a site and they literally recommend checking in the Google cache or Internet Archive if you've messed something up and need to restore changed content. This page proposes that you cut and paste the contents of every single text field in the UI to back things up and explicitly says,
It isn't possible to export and import content between Squarespace 7 sites.
There's a “Wordpress export” which, if I recall correctly, generates an XML file that very clearly leaves out all images and files from the managed content, and of course leaves out all of the layout code of the SquareSpace template, and which there is no way to re-import into SquareSpace anyways.

There's a public-facing REST API that will give you the same bits as the Wordpress backup and a handful more info.

Theoretically it ought to be possible to write a script or something which would access the internal API(s)—the ones that the web-based user interface accesses when you're logged in—and copy things from one site to another, or back a site up, but those APIs aren't documented (at least as of the beginning of last year) and the highest levels of tech support I was escalated to, who at least were able to understand what I was asking for, were useless.

Hopefully someone will chime in with a solution, but even if not it may be worth continuing to look, because all of these shortcomings are frustrating and kind of shocking TBH for the hosted content management market segment leader... so someone with more time than me, or who has lots of clients on SquareSpace, may have worked out ways of doing these things. Or applied enough pressure to tech support to get them to do it.

As far as the cut-over to the new site, is the domain name registered with SquareSpace? If so, RikiTikiTavi is probably right that tech support are the ones to ask.
posted by XMLicious at 6:55 PM on April 15, 2019 [1 favorite]


A couple more notes: in case you do any coding yourself, the public API I was thinking of above is called the “URL Queries API”.

These guys have at least one product—a mechanism for desktop code editors to let you work with the SquareSpace Custom CSS and Code Injection fields—that accesses the internal APIs I mention, or at least would have to do something similar, so if you have any budget they might be a place to inquire.
posted by XMLicious at 10:19 PM on April 15, 2019 [1 favorite]


If I read this correctly you want to create a new site using squarespace which the original site is on?

Squarespace is a great spot especially for a guy like me who has no interest in getting under the hood of Wordpress or other website builders.

I have changed templates a few times without any issues. The blog, probably by design, is a separate purpose built component that stands alone. You can reformat, switch templates whatever and the blog stays intact.

Of course changing templates will shift the parts and resources and you will need to resolve that in your new design but the changes are relatively easy.

You can work on the other site while the original stays active and only publish after you are ready. Two week trials are available and they are pretty easy extending that if you just get in touch.

Super support available. They help you with your problem, link to tutortials that relate to your issues and you can even have a transcript sent so you can look back at it.

I have had a designer on Fiverr help do a couple things i couldn't figure out. That was easy too by adding them as a admin with limited access.

Good luck!
posted by ashtray elvis at 3:10 AM on April 16, 2019 [1 favorite]


When I changed templates, all of the folders I'd created disappeared and all of the pages were dumped into the root folder without any warning. I don't think any of the content itself was deleted in that incident, but because SquareSpace doesn't even have the simple diff capabilities some 20th-century CMSs had, I can't easily check.

Much like the cut-and-paste-backup caveat, a little note in one article mentioned the folder genocide as a possible consequence of changing templates, and tech support chided me for my "confusion".

I still think it's worth the price my client pays but there's quite a bit of turd polishing going on in the marketing materials and flashy UI... the underlying product is quite rough still at version 7.
posted by XMLicious at 3:49 AM on April 16, 2019


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