Fri, February 22nd, 2008 by Brandon Stone
As you may have noticed Photoblogs.org has a new sponsor and now a new Freebie Friday with Squarespace, Inc. Squarespace has been around for years, offering high end solutions for creating blogs. And now these clever people have made a version specifically for photobloggers. Check out photographers.squarespace.com to see what they've got.
Part of what interests me about Squarespace is that it's a blogging company making a photoblogging tool and not just a photo sharing tool. This means that their journal features are solid, including great XML and XML-RPC ping settings, spam blocking, and comment control options. It also means that they have a lot of components that fit nicely with a photoblog; ie. forums, forms, static pages, and some solid gallery display features for large collections or user generated submissions.
At the moment Squarespace photoblogs do not offer social networking components or photo printing and selling, but I've been told that these features are in the works. For creating a serious photoblog Squarespace is a great choice, because of all the customizable features, versus a venue like Flickr that is more focused on the social aspect.
Squarespace is giving away a one year pro account worth $12 a month so you can create your own online portfolio or photoblog.
The prize will randomly be awarded to one lucky commenter, so go to it!
Be sure you make your comment by the evening of Thursday, February 28th in order for it to be counted!
Also, we'll be announcing last week's Freebie Friday winner in the next few days, so stay tuned.
New server!
February 22nd, 2008 at 10:59 pm
They have a gorgeous look. Every single sample is interesting, different, and beautiful. There are plenty of sites for the social aspects. Building a good site for commerce with support isn't as easy.
February 23rd, 2008 at 3:26 am
Wow - I'm really impressed. I've been looking for something simple to use for my new photography site since I just don't have the time to code my own from the ground up at the moment. Squarespace seems to be just what I've been looking for - thanks for the introduction!
February 24th, 2008 at 6:13 am
I'm happy with the sponsors like Squarespace and what they have to offer. What I'm not happy with is how the new layout of the site with the sponsors logos on does not display properly in certain browsers now. In particular the layout is not displaying properly on safari, with the tags overlapping the elements of the right sidebar. It doesn't look good and also interferes with the interface, making it difficult to read and interact with.
February 24th, 2008 at 8:58 am
Wow. SqueareSpace is a great a sponsor. A great and beautiful site for pro's and new photoblogger
February 24th, 2008 at 5:31 pm
Squarespace's interface is very rich and configurable, though a tad clunky for frequent updates--I'd see this as more an adjunct portfolio/gallery site than a daily-ish photoblog tool. But the results from tinkering around for a few minutes are really impressive; in a short time, you can build a very professional set of galleries.
February 27th, 2008 at 4:53 am
It seems like it's capable of being whatever you want, whether that be a base portfolio or a more frequently updated blog. Squarespace gets described as a blogging tool a lot, but really it's a full content management system. That means that it can be good at lots of things. I hadn't heard of it before this post, but I did some research and I found nothing but rave reviews. I'm not really interested in trying it out.
One thing that isn't really made clear from the photographers.squarespace.com url is what the difference between the "photographer" version and the normal version is. Is it just the template you start out with? Because I registered for a trial and it set me up with a basic photo portfolio template. It still looked like I had access to all the other features though. More of a marketing thing than a real difference in products, perhaps?