How Do I Customize Squarespace Websites?
There’s a common myth that goes around - the idea that you can’t customize Squarespace.
Sure, you don’t have the same level of flexibility that you can get on some non-hosted platform options, but you absolutely can customize a Squarespace site. You can add custom code and CSS styling, plugins, or even more by accessing the Squarespace Developer Platform.
Here are some things you can do to customize and some tips for figuring out how to get your customizations done:
Free download: 7 cool Squarespace customizations
Add custom code and CSS
You can absolutely add custom code and CSS to your Squarespace website. CSS refers to “Cascading Style Sheets” and use of it defines how your website will be styled across different screen sizes. It is built around selectors, properties, and property values. For example, an h2 heading is a selector, font size and style are selectors, and bold is a property value:
In Squarespace, you can make style changes by hitting up Design > Site Styles where no coding knowledge is required to change it up. However, there are some things you can’t do in the style editor and for those, you’ll need to go to Design > Custom CSS.
It’s important to know that if you mess about with the custom CSS, you need to know what you are doing. This is the part where it becomes possible to “break” your website with improperly added custom CSS. Squarespace doesn’t provide support for this, so you need to be super-careful. We’d suggest copying and pasting from tutorials, or, getting someone to do it who knows what they’re doing!
Where can you find more help? The Squarespace Coding and Customization forum contains a wealth of knowledge on anything custom. It is a community site though, so remember that any advice contained there isn’t necessarily backed by the people at Squarespace.
Squarespace Developer Platform
(Only for Squarespace 7.0)
If you have a comfortable level of coding knowledge, the Squarespace Developer Platform allows you to “create fully custom sites and integrate with third-party tools.” If you want to get started with the developer platform, the beginner tutorial is a great place to start.
The developer platform is a premium feature, which means it’s only available if you have a business or commerce plan. By enabling Developer Mode, you’ll get:
Full control over your template's HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.
A JSON API to output content from the CMS for use in the developer environment.
Complete access to your template's markup, style sheets, scripts, and template design assets.
Ability to use and modify the Base Template.
Access to use (but not modify) Squarespace’s existing editing tools, like blocks.
The developer platform isn’t really something to try messing with if you have a current website you’d like to add functionality to, but no coding knowledge. It would be pretty easy to mess it up, so if you’re interested in learning how to create customizations by coding, it would be better to start with learning the basics of coding.
Advanced coders are the most likely people to need the developer platform. It’s what we use here at SQSP Themes to create custom templates. To find out more, you can check out their FAQ page here.
Create a custom look without coding
Coding isn’t for everyone. But it’s entirely possible to create a custom look without having to dive into coding. Templates are just there as a base - if you don’t want to look like every other website that picked the same template, then it’s important that you adjust it for your own look and branding.
One thing you can do is avoid the demo pages. Instead, start with blank pages and add your preferred content in the way you envision it. This will avoid ending up with the same appearance as others who may have simply swapped out the demo features for their own.
The Style Editor is the thing to get familiar with to really ensure that you create a unique website. This is where you can change colors, fonts, styles and layouts to be different from the demo template.
The good thing about getting a custom look this way is that you can’t “break” your website. You’re not messing with code and everything is easily changed around or changed back to how you had it.
If there are still features you need that you can’t get by making changes in the Style Editor, you could always hire a Squarespace designer to custom code features for you. We know a few great designers, or you can easily find them via a Google search.
Plugins for Squarespace
Plugins are another great option for adding custom functionality to a Squarespace website. A plugin is basically a snippet of code that you install on your website in order to achieve the desired functionality. (We wrote about 50 must-have Squarespace plugins here).
A useful plugin you can use on your Squarespace website is online forms. Whether you blog, sell products or collect leads on Squarespace, you can benefit from using Squarespace forms with different features, customization options, and app integrations.
Whenever you add any sort of third-party coding, there’s always some sort of risk to your website. For example, poorly coded plugins might slow your website down or even break it altogether. It’s important to look for plugins from reputable developers who show commitment to regularly maintaining their plugins. Sometimes system updates mean a plugin update is necessary, for example.
Download our 7 cool Squarespace customizations here
Tutorials for customizing your site
The Squarespace community is pretty awesome and there are a number of experienced people out there who have put together tutorials to help you make customizations. Here are just a few of those (you can probably find the one you’re looking for by searching “Squarespace tutorial for [what you want to do]”:
How to add hover animations to your Squarespace site (Bold and Pop)
How to create half, angled and floating background effects in Brine (Thirty Eight Visuals)
How to animate text for your Squarespace site (Schwartz-Edmisten)
Add custom bullet points to Squarespace (Station Seven)
Add drop shadow to buttons (Jacob Ruiz)
How to change the background color of just one section in Squarespace (Paige Brunton)
Add a custom background to Squarespace site navigation (My Billie Designs)
Customize Squarespace forms (Big Cat Creative)
Final thoughts
It’s a myth that if you choose Squarespace, you won’t be able to customize your website as you’d like. There are several options for creating a custom look and you don’t always have to be a coding genius to get there.
As another resource for people looking for answers to their Squarespace questions, take a look at the SQSP Entrepreneurs group on Facebook. We have a great bunch of people in there and discussions or resources for a lot of the questions you might have. Check it out!
