Squarespace CEO and Founder Anthony Casalena announced the totally redesigned web publishing platform today – Squarespace 7 – the company’s first major software upgrade in over two years. Casalena says:
Building a great website, finding and licensing top-notch imagery, setting up domains and email – these all remain difficult tasks for many people today. With Squarespace 7, we’re taking another huge step in helping our customers bring their ideas to life. Not only that, the architecture of the new interface paves the way for many new features we have in the works.
New Interface: The completely redesigned site manager is simplified in style with new editing tools aimed at a seamless and intuitive (and beautiful) experience. Casalena demoed the now live side-by-side editing as well as annotations that appear on everything you may want to modify on your site. Perhaps one of the coolest features was the ‘device view’ functionality, allowing you to adjust your desktop browser window to view what your content would look like across varying screen sizes, showing you immediately how your site will look on a smartphone or tablet.
Getty Images: A partnership with Getty Images now gives Squarespace users tens of millions of high-res photos in image picker for $10 an image. “We have lots of options of strawberry images on a wooden table,” Casalena said during the press event. But more notably, users now have access to creative and editorial photos covering major events to, well, striking images of fruit.
Cover Pages: The splash page builder can be added to any existing Squarespace site or used to make a standalone website, conveying a single idea in an eye-catching way in even less time.
Google Apps: Squarespace founder Casalena also announced a partnership with Google, meaning business features can now be easily set up within Squarespace. Squarespace customers can seamlessly set up email accounts, schedule events and gain access to file storage using Google Apps for Work starting at $5 per user, per month.
Mobile Apps: Squarespace 7 features the Blog, Note, Metrics and Portfolio apps, now available for both iOS and Android.
Developer Platform: Squarespace 7 coincides with the Developer Platform formally exiting beta, catering to experienced developers, designers and agencies needs.
New Designs: Squarespace 7 features fifteen new category-specific templates. Squarespace collaborated with the likes of free solo climber Alex Honnold and band St. Lucia for inspiration behind designs Mountaineer and Horizon, respectively.
Squarespace 7 will begin rolling out tonight, Casalena said. Select groups of existing customers will gain access via the Website Manager dashboard of their account by checking the box next to Squarespace 7 (Beta).