AshtonLamont

I use a lot of photos in Squarespace - I am a photographer so thats why! Anyway, the conventional wisdom regarding Search Engine Optimisation in general has always been 1) name photo files using relevant words (obviously), use lower case only, use hyphens and underscores between words, don't use unusual characters, don't use lengthy file names 2) use photo Alt Text to describe the photo as if to a human, upper case and spaces are fine and in fact better as more human 3) use photo Captions in a human-like manner similar to Alt Text. So far so good. However in practice that can be an enormous amount of work which I suspect may no longer be relevant. I create new blank sections (with my own default Format Background and Colors) into which I add multiple photos one at a time. My photos are a mixture of landscape upright and square aspect ratios and I have not found a way to do that mix of ratios using any of the Squarespace supplied Images Sections. For each photo for adding to my Section Squarespace specifies each filename but notes it as "FILENAME (OPTIONAL)". "IMAGE ALT TEXT" is also available to enter, obviously. And "CAPTION" selected as "Caption Below". It seems to me that so long as you use Captions with keyword relevant content there is no longer any point in having keyword relevant file names or alt text because Google is using the Captions to describe the photos anyway. I've found this appears to be the case now when browsing some recent expert SEO content elsewhere. You may think "why not add all three anyway, it cannot hurt". However if the amount of photos is anything from a dozen to a couple of hundred then adding all three is a huge job, particulary as you should not simply copy and paste filenames to alt texts and captions. Any thought. Thanks.

As I say it is the Business Plan and it is in 7.1 I would create a specific page for an individual client to view - which I could include password protect obviously - and add a series of photos using one Inline Block per photo. Squarespace recognises each image file name so long as I allow it enough time to digest it before clicking on "Apply" and it then gets into the Alt-Text. I could add a Caption by copy and pasting the file name but that is long and tedious if there are more than a handful of photos. What I would like to achieve is that the file name automatically goes into the Caption - perhaps it needs to read the Alt-Text rather than the file name to get the Caption. At present as I'm sure you know it works the other way round in that the Caption becomes the Alt-Text. Its very quick and simple for me to add the file name onto the front of each of a group of photos with a batch action that can run into the hundreds if needs be. At present I use Capture One Pro the RAW photo files editor. But that is not ideal from the end viewers perspective. Incidentally, I've found that the maximum number of photos per page appears to allow higher than the "official" 250. I was able to post 261 photos to one page with no warnings showing. This may be because my photo dimensions are 1500px x 1000px landscape and 667px x 1000px portrait rather than the suggested 2500px. I also use an excellent little app called JPEGmini which batch reduces JPEGs by an average of 25% with no noticeable quality hits. Maybe Squarespace is looking more at the total file weight rather than the total numbers of files. Thanks.

Hi, I am using 7.1 in the Business Plan. I am rewriting a huge old website which was written mainly in Dreamweaver CS6. I am a photographer and am self-taught in HTML / CSS so some aspects I am very familiar with and some not at all. Therefore please accept my apologies if I am wasting your time. Anyway, I am creating pages for photo galleries. These are simply from blank new pages to which I add various Sections. Then within the appropriate Section I add photos using the basic Inline Block and the user gets to see each photo from the top downwards by scrolling. This is my preferred design as the vast majority of my visitors use smartphones and they can get frustrated very quickly if designs are too fancy. For some pages I would like that the image file automatically appears in the Caption under each photo. I can do this manually for each image obviously but that gets laborious. Is there any way of automating this? I know that SS adds the filename to the alt-text as a default but that appears to be as far as it goes. n.b. in these particular pages no image would need any caption other than the file name (if I did want to add extra information I would add a Text Block for that). At present I have to add file names to images by creating a watermark or suchlike using a bulk action such as that with Photoshop or Capture One Pro. But that is far from ideal as the visitors cannot copy and paste the filename to their own list. Many thanks if you've made it this far!