The Squarespace bug that didn't allow me to make any posts
Uh, so you're probably wondering why the last few days were a bit silent around here. Somehow, through some exact special combination of buttons, I managed to unearth a bug in Squarespace that has never been seen before. No support ticket or forum posts on the topic and even Squarespace engineers seemed baffled at how this bug was messing with my site.
So if you're interested in how I troubleshooted this, read along.
So there were two problems with my site. The first, was that for some reason, the Previous and Next navigation buttons at the bottom of my blog disappeared. I hadn't changed any code or anything. They just vanished. But at the same time that I noticed this, I also noticed a rogue post in my admin section that had no title and was also published, and yet it didn't appear on my site at all as the most recent post (as the timestamp indicated it should). Odd. I couldn't edit the post or delete it. And every time I tried to open it to edit it, I got a message that said Squarespace couldn't find the missing link or something.
I wasn't sure if the two were related so I opened support tickets with Squarespace on the issues and nobody seemed to have a fix except to start a new blog, move all the posts over to it, and delete the blog you are reading now. Not a very hard thing to do, but I didn't really want to go through the trouble.
I knew that the post in question that seemed to linger in purgatory on my Squarespace account was originally drafted on my mobile device. So I tried to delete it there as well. No luck. Then I noticed that anytime I made a draft on my mobile device to my account, the same issue happened on my web browser where the post would be missing stuff and not be able to be deleted. Very weird.
So against the requests of Squarespace engineers, I created a new blog but instead of moving all the good posts over, I just moved the bad posts over. Then I deleted that new blog, including the bad posts that were wreaking havoc on my site, and the issue was resolved. And my navigation buttons came back.
So without being a programmer or engineer, I'm assuming that the issue stems from their latest mobile app update. Hopefully this helps somebody in the same situation. Really messed me up for a few days.
Photojournalist David Guttenfelder makes an amazing ad for Squarespace
Watch this wonderful ad featuring one of my favorite photojournalists David Guttenfelder. I remember first hearing of Guttenfelder for his work deep inside North Korea. He was one of the first photographers I can remember who published work continuously from inside North Korea (or soon thereafter following each of his trips). He has gotten closer and more intimate images than any other photographer I can recall and his work is obviously top-notch.
The ad here is made for Squarespace's Field Stories website which is audio commentary on select photographs from Guttenfelder's archives. Take some time out of your day and have a look.
Webflow CMS allows you to design a fully responsive website without any coding knowledge
I know I literally just started this site again on Squarespace, but a small (very small) part of me is having 2nd thoughts after seeing the demo of a CMS called Webflow. It's the first time I've ever heard of the company but Ars Technica does a good job of describing it as Photoshop mixed with Wordpress. The whole selling point of Webflow seems to be convincing users that they don't need programming expertise to make a great website. Essentially, if you can visualize it, Webflow should be able to put it together without you entering a single line of code.
That's a huge deal for somebody like me who has lately become incredibly overwhelmed by website coding. So much that it has sort of gotten in the way of the content itself. What phone apps do so well that a website has yet to accomplish is just put content first and foremost. WIth Webflow (and Squarespace too), the design is simply drag and drop, leaving the user with plenty more time to forge ahead with presenting content.
Compared to Squarespace, Webflow has a lot more customization. I don't love their price plans at all, so I'm hoping that with time, Squarespace enters this same realm of drag-and-drop customization (I think their developer beta allows for this to some extent but I'm not 100% sure). They've already got it in the content section, now just get that same idea over to the page design.