Whether or not I should buy into Squarespace

Hi all.

I have a page that looks fine in the editor, but when I save, the images go all out of whack!

When I preview the page on full screen it's fine again but a soon as you move the corner of the page in, the images start to go out of alignment once more.

This seems to me like it's one of those "you have one job" kinda things. Scaling 101 & all that.

Is it user error? Is it the before & after slider code I'm using in the first image?

Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated.

So, I'm in my trial period & I'm finding the whole Squarespace experience to be one of buggy frustrations. Every time I think "right, I'm ready to pay & get this site live" something happens to make me think it's never going to be as perfect as I need it to be.

One thing I'm finding is that images are not staying aligned when scaling the browser page size. It just looks rubbish!

One of my other frustrations is that there seems to be no correlation between the grid in my sections & the editing tools. I've had to screenshot the grid & use it in photoshop to try & get my images to fill the blocks exactly, otherwise, all the spaces between images are different.

Why can't I make a block then place the image into it & then scale the image inside the block (in a similar way to how I would in InDesign) so that I can choose the position & crop of my image when it's inside the actual block it's going to end up in? It makes what should be a simple interactive process very clunky & half guesswork. I've seen tutorials about a mythical "grey box" that seems to allow this functionality but it's entirely absent from my editing windows.

The only workaround I can think of is to assemble all of my layouts in Photoshop & then place them as a single image with a section, which kinda defeats the object, doesn't it?

Is this all "early days / pilot error" kinda stuff & I just don't know enough yet, or is this just the Squarespace experience?

All I need is an on line portfolio. No selling, no interactivity, basically nothing complicated. If Squarespace can't do that out of the box then what is the point?

Would you like to share your website URL and site wide password along with some screenshots of the difficulties that you're having?

1 hour ago, Snowdog said:

(in a similar way to how I would in InDesign)

Squarespace, like all website has to be dynamic, InDesign layouts are not dynamic, so what works in InDesign doesn't necessarily work for a website.

1 hour ago, Snowdog said:

I've had to screenshot the grid & use it in photoshop to try & get my images to fill the blocks exactly, otherwise, all the spaces between images are different.

If you press the G key when editing it will bring up the grid. 

What type of layout are you trying to achieve?

I haven't paid any money yet, so I'm not sure what URL I'd be sharing.

It might be this?

https://mushroom-spinach-ab4f.squarespace.com/config/pages/6509ad4580ac687e943ecc31

I've discovered the "design" tab since I posted & that at least allows me to choose a way to fit the image to the block, which helps.

Yes, I know I can show the grid (although it seems to prefer to stay hidden & I have to keep re-showing it every time I visit the edit page) but the grid doesn't help with image sizing. In other words, when I'm in photoshop, I have no way of knowing exactly what dimensions to crop my image to unless I overlay a screenshot of the grid onto it. And even then, because the grid is made of lines of two or tree pixels thickness, I still don't know exactly how to crop my images. It's all guesswork & I'm used to more precision.

Yes, websites are dynamic, but when I fit an image to a block in Squarespace, some of the image inevitably falls outside of that box. It would be no different if I could grab handles on my image & scale it & move it around within the block & end up just seeing the visible area. Some image would fall outside of it, as it already does. But I would then have much more control over which section of my image I can see.

What type of layout? A simple portfolio. But when I put my images into one section, they all went out of alignment when I saved the edit. Then, when I previewed the page, they were aligned again but as soon as I resized the page, the "dynamic" thing happened & they all got screwed up again.

There are probably some key things I'm doing wrong so hopefully some pennies will start to drop soon, but it seems very haphazard.

There are so many shonky things, though. Like, just now, I made a new project page, set the dimensions, grid etc. of the section added an image & when I deleted it, the section collapsed to one square high!

Also, I would have been able to duplicate a project & the go in & chase the contents, but I can' seem to do that so I have to start from scratch each time.

I'm sure it will get easier but right now it's exhausting.
 

12 minutes ago, Snowdog said:

But I would then have much more control over which section of my image I can see.

You can you need to set the "focal point" of the image in the image settings so that it will crop preferentially opposite the focal point.

15 minutes ago, Snowdog said:

It might be this?

https://mushroom-spinach-ab4f.squarespace.com/

 

Yes, this is your Squarespace URL, but since the site is private I would need you to set a site wide password to be able to view:

https://squarefortytwo.com/squarespace-guides/add-a-site-wide-password-to-your-squarespace-website

I think you're misunderstanding me. I feel I should be able to grab hold of my image once it's in the block & scale it however much I want. How I set the focal point is irrelevant.

And while we're on the password thing, here's another thing that's getting on my nerves... Every single time... WITHOUT EXCEPTION... That I've read instructions about doing something in SqS, they are different to what I'm seeing. Your instructions say "then select "Website" from the options". "Website" is not one of the options. It is now under "Site Availability" and the only reason I realised that is because it had "password" written next to it. There's no button to toggle, either.

Anyway, the password is set to Spongebob_Squarespace

2 minutes ago, Snowdog said:

I think you're misunderstanding me. I feel I should be able to grab hold of my image once it's in the block & scale it however much I want. How I set the focal point is irrelevant.

I'm sorry if I'm misunderstanding, I'm simply trying to help you with the tools that are available, I can't magic up new ones that Squarespace doesn't have. I know how InDesign handles images within a frame, but that is not how an image in a block works in Squarespace. The tools you have are for the image to be set to FIT or FILL, to align top/bottom/left/right and move the focal point.

Have you tried image galleries? Those are different but still don't have the same tools as InDesign.

Sorry, I appreciate you can't magic up tools that aren't there, I was just thinking of the way that I feel it SHOULD work and hopefully might work in future, because it would be better and easier. (I think I was also secretly hoping you might say "oh, of course you can do that, you blithering idiot, you just have to click on the "put it where you want it" button at the bottom. But you didn't. 😆)

So, yes, I'm finding this incredibly frustrating, but it is getting easier. Or was. Now I'm getting a timeout error when trying to add a featured image, so I've come to a halt again.

5 minutes ago, Snowdog said:

"put it where you want it"

That sounds like a powerful feature!

Anyway, I've created another page with a selection of images & they're scaling correctly so I can only assume it's the 3rd party "slider" code that allows for a "before & after" which is causing the alignment issue.

I think the best way forward is to continue doing what I've done & put the other images in a separate section when I'm using the slider code.