Why I use Squarespace

As someone who writes code, I have lots of options for hosting a website, so why is my blog on Squarespace?

I use Github Pages for frontend projects where I want total control of the site. I keep a DigitalOcean VPS around for when I need a publicly accessible backend server. And I could use either of these to host a blog, but I don't.

This blog exists so I can occasionally vomit some words / music into the void of the public internet. Writing, making, and sharing are my goals. Anything that I have to do beyond that - even if it's not hard for me, even if it's sometimes fun - is a distraction.

I know I'm giving up customizability, page size, load times, and so on. That's fine. I don't want to mess with Jekyll build errors, Wordpress plug-in installation, or Let's Encrypt - all the yak-shaving that comes with running your own site.

Squarespace gives me a box where I can paste some words and click a button and have them appear on my website instantly. There's even a button to send me an email, which took me about a minute to set up. What more could I ask for?

Disclosure: I'm a little biased here, knowing a bunch of great people at Squarespace and not paying for this site: both perks of my past internship with them. They took me in after the great Etsy intern program cancellation of 2017 (which I should write about sometime). But the point stands anyways - and congratulations to everyone at Squarespace for going public recently!