How to Make a Website Without Margins
A few years ago, I built Quora – a community for questions and answers. Since then, it’s grown to over 500 million visitors per month
One of the unique things about Quora is that the site isn’t afraid to ask the questions that most people are too afraid to ask. People can’t help but feel that they know something about topics that interest them. This constant influx of interest makes Quora the perfect place to build a business.
I knew that having a website was important, but I also knew that I didn’t want to pay for expensive hosting or build stuff from scratch. So I turned to Squarespace, and I couldn’t have been happier with the platform.
Why Squarespace?
The most important thing to keep in mind whenever you’re deciding what website builder to use is that you want a simple, beautiful website that’s easy to maintain.
Most other website builders will give you all of the bells and whistles, but at the end of the day, you’ll be stuck fighting with code to make updates yourself. With Squarespace, all of the configuration is done through a simple drag-and-drop interface, and all of the coding is done for you.
Another great feature of Squarespace is that you can use many of the store templates to build your site. This means that you don’t have to worry about choosing the right colors or font for your site. These are all things that you can change later on if you want to, but for now, you can just focus on building your website.
Setting Up Your New Website
Once you’ve made the decision that Squarespace is the perfect fit for your needs, the next step is to set up your new website. To do this, simply head over to the Squarespace dashboard and follow the prompts.
When you get to the dashboard, you’ll see a tab called Blog at the top. This is where you’ll want to click first because this is where you’ll want to build your site from. From here, you can see all of the different layouts that you can choose for your site.
In addition to the blog tab, you’ll see a navigation menu on the left. This is where you can click to choose different parts of your site, such as the “About” page or the “Services” page.
To build a website, simply click on the rectangle with the plus sign in the middle of the page.
This will take you to a dashboard that looks similar to the one you saw at the beginning. However, this time you’ll see sections for “Content” and “Layout.”
The Content section will be where you’ll want to add the different pages that make up your website. From here, you can choose the blog post layout, the video layout, or the image layout. Each of these will display your content in a different way.
The Layout section will be where you can change the overall look and feel of your site. You can choose from a variety of different designs, and each one will give you a different feel. For the sake of this tutorial, we’ll use the Blog post layout, which is the third button down on the right side.
This will bring you to a dashboard with your blog post on it. Above the blog post, you’ll see the Categories and Tags for the post. You can click on either one of these to see all of the posts that are associated with it.
Adding A Blog Post
To add a new blog post to your site, simply follow the prompts.
When you get to the post, you’ll see that there are several sections below the post. To the left, you’ll see the categories for the blog post. These are essentially the topics that you’ll want to write about on your site. Each category will have several sub-categories that you can choose from.
You can add a picture above the post by clicking on the small camera in the top-right corner of the screen.
Then you can add a brief description of the post below the categories. Next to this, you’ll see the tags for the post. These are essentially keywords or phrases that people use when they’re searching for content similar to this.
To make the post more discoverable, you can add some links below the post. The most effective way to do this is to add a link to each of the social media platforms that you use.
Adding Other Types Of Content
To add other types of content to your site, simply follow the prompts.
You can add a small video clip above the post by clicking on the video icon in the top-right corner of the screen.
Then you can add an image below the video. Each image that you add will allow viewers to click on a linked video to learn more about it.
To add a podcast episode, you can click on the ellipsis (…) in the top-right corner of the screen. Then, you’ll see a list of episodes from different podcasts. To add a transcript of an audio podcast episode, click on the microphone icon in the top-right corner of the screen. Then, click on the down arrow icon to the the right of the word “Transcript.”
A quick tip when adding content to your site: Make sure that the thumbnail (the first picture that appears when you click on a post) is a high-quality one.
Editing An Existing Blog Post
To edit an existing blog post on your site, simply follow the prompts.
When you get to the post, you’ll see several sections below it. On the left, you’ll see the categories for the post. These are essentially the topics that you’ll want to write about on your site. Each category will have several sub-categories that you can choose from.
You can click on either one of these to see all of the posts that are associated with it. Below these categories, you’ll see the tags for the post. These are essentially keywords or phrases that people use when they’re searching for content similar to this.
To edit an existing blog post, simply click on the small pencil in the top-right corner of the screen.
This will take you to a screen that looks similar to the one you saw at the beginning. However, this time you’ll see some of the fields that you can edit for the post. You can click on any of these to see more information about it.
To add a new section to an existing blog post, simply click on the small plus sign in the top-right corner of the screen.
This will take you to a new part of your blog post where you can add more sections. Use this section to add more information about the topic, add more links, or even add an entire section from scratch.
The great thing about a blog post is that you can always add more sections to it to make it longer. This means that instead of having to start from scratch each time you want to add another article, you can just expand the post that you have.
One more thing: You can click on the small gear icon to the right of “Drafts” to see all of the different drafts that you have for your post. You can edit these as much as you want before publishing them.
Adding A Service Or Product To Your Site
To add a service or product to your site, simply follow the prompts.
When you get to the product or service, you’ll see similar categories and tags as you did with the blog post. However, this time you’ll see the instructions for adding a product review or a testimonial.
To add a product or service review, simply click on the small smiley face icon in the top-right corner of the screen.
This will take you to a screen that looks similar to the one you saw at the beginning. However, this time you’ll see information about the review. After you fill out this information, you’ll have to choose a rating by clicking on one of the five dots on the right side of the screen.
Then, you can add a review by clicking on the Write A Review button at the bottom of the screen. This review will appear below all of the other reviews on your site.