hdledbetter

@LaunchTheDamnThing, I’m very grateful to you for taking the time to offer your advice, personal experience, and encouragement – thank you! (And I realized, after seeing your username, that I have been on your site before and it’s beautiful!) You make a great point with regard to different clients being comfortable with different levels of involvement with their site and how that should factor into SK usage. I would say that, thus far, my clients tend to fall along a 50/50 split as far as how “busy” they like to be with their sites. (Is it bad that I sometimes wish most of them did NOT want to play with their new toy after I finish making it?) I try to elicit this information from them during the pre-build phase, so I know what I’m dealing with. For those who express a desire to regularly “fuss” with their site, I do take a slightly different approach to what and how I code for them. It would seem that SK could be considered and treated similarly. Thank you for explaining how you use the “Active” sites feature of your SK account, too! I was eyeing the “Designer” tier of the subscription options but for now have the one-site Pro tier, (experimenting on my own before playing with others’ sites.) I was a bit fuzzy on precisely how moving sites in and out of “Active” mode worked, but that sounds awesome! Ah, and imposter syndrome is real! I think, still being relatively new to web design (just a few years in, as it were), I just want to ensure I’m really doing right by my clients. I’m a bit neurotic about details and what-ifs and have a tendency to privately make myself a little nuts worrying about anything and everything. I would hate for them to go elsewhere down the road for whatever reason and feel, after speaking with another designer, that I had shortchanged them by not coding everything manually…or something to that effect, if that makes sense. I did have a bit of a laugh when you described the SQSP site that looked like it had stepped out of 1999 -- not out of meanness, mind you -- but because I too have seen more than one of those and was similarly stunned when I realized they were SQSP sites! (I confess that sometimes those inadvertent discoveries DO make me feel a bit better about my skillset...but then I feel bad for that making me feel better. Well, I mean…we’re being polite and not naming names, so there’s that!) 😉 (And everyone must start somewhere, I know.) I sincerely appreciate your closing comments regarding what constitutes a “real” web designer. I am a designer, for sure not a developer. I can write a fair amount of HTML, CSS, and juuust enough JS to be dangerous, but I defer to those far more experienced than me on that end of things, generally. Excellent point regarding SK being analogous to things like Dubsado, etc. Time is money, as you said, and I can see SK saving me plenty of the former and potentially earning me a bit more of the latter. Also: another great point concerning backend code alterations! I do very much dig that aspect of SK being on top of any SQSP changes for us. SQSP alone saves SO much agony and labor compared to WordPress, for example, and SK just kind of adds another layer of comfort with the code being stored separately from the main SQSP CSS we implement ourselves. You have given me much food for thought and offered a very helpful array of info and insights, and I thank you again! Your time and knowledge are much appreciated! Heather

Thanks for this; I appreciate the excellent advice! I think my next move simply needs to be adding this to the list of things I discuss with each client during pre-build consults, giving each the choice and explaining Squarekicker and what it does. If a client would prefer me not use it, I'm certainly okay with that. I'll just appreciate those projects where I can have it as a handy "shortcut" more. 🙂

Hi, All, I have recently been experimenting with the Squarekicker extension and really enjoy using it thus far. As their marketing states, it really does cut down on certain CSS tasks that can consume a fair amount of time during the course of a normal site build. I have had occasion to speak by e-mail with Squarekicker customer service and was impressed with their response time and helpfulness. I also appreciate that I heard directly from Nick, who I believe is their founder, who helped address a few minor issues I experienced when signing up for Squarekicker initially (no fault of Squarekicker.) All in all, a very cool new tool that seems to be supported by a solid group of professionals. My primary questions moving forward are for anyone who may already be integrating Squarekicker into client site builds. • How are you handling the site hand-off to clients with regard to how you document the use of Squarekicker in their project in any pre- or post-build materials? Because the code is stored with Squarekicker, you cannot just pass it on with the site as you can the CSS you add yourself within the Squarespace interface. As a result, I see no way around acknowledging that you have used this external tool to design certain elements of their site. (Not that I wish to "hide" it, at any rate, but it is an additional thing that probably needs to be disclosed to the client since they'll need to have their own Squarekicker subscription in the future to alter anything you did to their site with Squarekicker.) • Have you found a tactful way to explain to clients that, should they choose to further customize their site on their own or use another designer for any changes down the road, they will need to pay an additional fee to Squarekicker to do so? I am wondering if some clients will balk at being told they have their Squarespace subscription fees, as well as potential Squarekicker fees on top of that should they ever decide to modify certain aspects of their site. I personally do not think it's a huge deal, but I know some clients might. Another concern I have is if, as mentioned above, a client were to ask another designer to modify their site in the future and the other designer sees that I have used something like Squarekicker -- will this hurt my reputation as a designer? Yes, I know how to code in most all of what Squarekicker enables me to do, but I love the time-saving simplicity of Squarekicker for more mundane functions like overlapping sections, image effects, text changes, and general layout arrangement. I just can't yet conjure up a way to explain my use of such a tool without at some point hearing accusations of "You're not a real designer if you need a tool like that" or similar. 😑 While I feel reasonably confident in my skills and approach to my business generally, this is one area that is new and foreign to me and in which I could use some advice. Genuinely appreciate any helpful feedback! Thanks! Heather