Text-only alternate to available templates?

I have worked my way through the available templates during my trial period but cannot find one (or modify an existing one) that meets my needs.

Briefly, my needs are:

• Text-only blog format
• Site name at the top of the page
• Logo beside, below or above my site-name
• Navigation menu alone in a sidebar
• Date/timestamp under the title of posts

The built-in templates are very image-heavy. I’ve been through them all, trying to strip out and pare down the features to meet the above requirements. Perhaps where the site name and logo are concerned, I need to create a banner image containing the logo and the site name?

Paul Thurrott’s and Llewellyn’s blogs are Squarespace-hosted and meet pretty much all my needs but theres no indication which templates they use.

Are sites such as those possible only via self-made templates?

Many thanks for any suggestions!Apologies for my dim-wittedness

Peter

It looks to me like those sites you're referencing use Squarespace version 5 not 6. ie an older version of squarespace. I don't think version 5 is available anymore for new sites.

You are correct in saying that the current Squarespace 6 templates are very image centric. At least half of the templates are aimed at photographers (much to my frustration). I suspect photographers are the biggest customers of Squarespace, given the amount of templates they produce for them!

This issue is discussed here:http://answers.squarespace.com/questions/943/which-template-would-best-for-this-magazine-news-style

However, some of the templates cope fine with or without images. eg this one:http://calvinblogs.com/stephanie-b/

which I got to from here:http://www.squarespace.com/templates/?q=blogging

When you sign up for a new site there is an option to remove all the default content when you get to the editing of the blog pages. I suggest you do this, then add some new image free content. This will give you an idea of which templates cope well without images.

Is it true you can't sign up for new V5 sites anymore? If so, that sucks. I can't seem to find how to sign up for one anymore... real shame if that's the case.

I seem to recall reading that somewhere on the old forum , before they deleted it.

Thank-you Scoobie! As to the version 5 templates, I feared as much.

I am off to try out the Peak template, as you so kindly suggested!

Rock on!peter