Squarespace 7.0 vs 7.1 - what’s the difference?
If you follow Squarespace or have tried to purchase a website template this year, you may have realized there are two versions out there - Squarespace 7.0 and Squarepace 7.1.
If you used Squarespace between 2014 - early 2020 you created your website using a template in the 7.0 version. Starting in early 2020 Squarespace released their newest version of their website builder - 7.1. A quick way to know which version you have is to click the HELP palette when you’re signed into your website in the gray bar on the left side and scroll down to see which version you are running.
But what the heck does that actually mean?! I’m going to break down the major differences for you.
Since I am a visual person, I created a video going over all the changes plus written through below as well - enjoy!
A few facts up front:
Something I get asked all the times is if your ACCOUNT is 7.0 or 7.1. It is not! You can have both 7.0 and 7.1 websites living in your account!
Once you pay for hosting on a 7.1 website, you can’t switch the hosting to a 7.0 website (or vise versa). Although if you paid for the year up front and it’s within a month, Squarespace is usually pretty great about refunds!
At this time, there is no way to convert a website built in a 7.0 template to a 7.1 template. If you have a 7.0 site do not worry! Squarespace has promised to keep updating the 7.0 templates. It is NOT a bad thing! I do believe sometime in the near future there will be a really simple way to do this, but until then 7.0 is still an amazing platform and is constantly being updated!
There is no way to transfer blog posts from a 7.0 to a 7.1 site. Again, hopefully there will be in the future but not right now.
If you’re looking at purchasing a website template design like mine in 7.1, you won’t want to purchase hosting before hand. I will transfer you a brand new 7.1 site that is fully designed ready for you to edit and then launch whenever you are ready!
For website designers: There is no way (other than manually!) to duplicate a page from one 7.1 website to another like there is in 7.0 with the Squarespace Websites Tools Extension (a lifesaver!).
Templates
In 7.0 there are specific “templates” to choose from that all have varying capabilities. Every time you change your template in 7.0, it resets all your styles and possibly how your pages function. This is a big pain! In 7.1 every template you start with has the exact same types of capabilities so you’ll never need to change to a different template for capability purpouses. This is a great - I really love this feature! Once you choose a template and start building your site in 7.1 you cannot change the template.
Design Panel
How you design the styles in your website (fonts, colors, image blocks, buttons, etc.) is COMPLETELY different. This is the biggest change you will find between the two versions! In 7.0 when you go to your “styles” panel, it is a long running list of all the styles you can change. Fonts, colors and spacings are all lumped into one. But in 7.1 they are now separated out into different panels:
FONTS: Squarespace has created pre-made “font packs” for you to choose from and then customize. You can update the heading, paragraph, buttons and miscellaneous font styles and then assign one of those styles or create a new completely custom styles to everything else such as the navigation, newsletter block, blog items, shop items, etc. Another new variation is you have 4 heading styles and 3 paragraph styles. BUT all headings must be the exact same font and can only vary in size, as well as the paragraph styles. This is one huge problem I have with 7.1. I get why it was built this way, to easily be able to update all the fonts on the website across the board and look uniform, but not being able to have 3 unique fonts on your website like in 7.0 I think really puts a damper on creativity and being able to create hierarchy.
COLORS: This is something I actually love! It has become super simple to drastically change the colors of your website all at once. When you go to the “color” palette you now either create a custom or choose a pre-made “color palette” for your website. It gives you white, black and then an accent, light and dark color you can choose. Then based on your new color palette, you get 10 “section themes” you can choose from to use on each section throughout your pages. Here it can get insanely overwhelming because to further it - you can change every color across the site in every single theme. THAT’S A LOT OF OPTIONS!
ANIMATIONS: This is new as well and gives 7.1 a very distinct look! You can choose from 5 different “site animations” of how you want your content to load on the page. You can choose for the animations to be slow, medium or fast.
SITE SPACING: This one is funny to me because there are only 2 options in this palette. You can choose the max width you want your website to go to (I usually choose 1800px) and then how much padding on the sides you want (I usually choose 1vw since you can choose the padding on each individual section to be what you need for that content instead of using space blocks like in 7.0!)
BUTTONS: These are the same options you have for buttons in 7.0 but they just have their own little palette now! One thing here that is a little annoying is that you can’t change the colors or fonts of them - you have to do that in the FONT and COLOR palette separately.
PRODUCT ITEMS: Here you can edit all the options such as spacings, alignments, click actions, etc. - just not fonts and colors.
IMAGE BLOCKS: Here you can edit all the alignment, width and separation options for any type of image block! Again - fonts and colors will be edited for those specifically in those palettes. One note is there is no longer an outline option for the image block buttons like in 7.0.
One big style favorite from 7.0 that is not available in 7.1 is the secondary navigation and ability to add a search bar in the navigation area. Parallax is also not available in 7.1 (although there is code that can be added to make this happen).
Woo! Still with me? ;)
Pages and content
In 7.0 if you want to have multiple sections you need to create them through adding an “index page” and then add individual pages to it to create the “sections”. In 7.1 you now only create a new “page” and can add as many sections to the page as you want! You can also edit all the sections at the same time and drag and drop blocks from one section to another. This is an awesome new feature. They have lots of pre-made section designs you can add or just start with a blank one.
Each section has a lot of editing options such as the amount of vertical padding, horizontal padding, color of background and adding a background image/video. Then you can choose the “section theme” that I spoke about above for each section as well. You can also easily move sections up and down on a page and duplicate them.
Content blocks are added in the same way, but you will notice a few are missing from 7.0. There is no more “gallery” block - instead they have replaced it with a gallery page type that can be added as a section on any page. This is a big downer for me because I love using the gallery grid block. Although, it is still available only to add in blog posts.
A few other differences in the pages:
Blog pages: A lot of the design style options are now done right in the blog page with the section editor tool (pencil) including all the formatting and the section theme. Creating a new blog post works the same way, but in 7.1 you get all the options for editing the post width, height, etc. just like other sections.
Portfolio pages: In 7.0 you use the “Gallery” collection to create a gallery and in 7.1 they have created a “Portfolio” collection. Portfolio page are amazing! It automatically creates a landing page of your different “projects” that you can then click into and see more photos. Each project can also have sections added to the top or bottom of it.
Header: In the header section of 7.1 is now where you add your logo / site title instead of under “design” in 7.0. It gives you options to add certain “elements” such as social or a button and gives you global, desktop and mobile editing options on how to set up the menu design and logo size. I love this addition!
Footer: I also love what they’ve done with the footer! Instead of having Footer Top, Middle and Bottom like in 7.0, you can now just add as many sections as you want and each have a different section theme.
Cover Pages: Do not exist in 7.1. I find this problematic, but hopefully it’s added in the future.
Also in general for all the “collection" pages (blog, shop, events, etc.) in 7.1 you can add sections to the top or bottom of the content, which is awesome!
So… which one is the right one?
The answer is either!
Here’s a quick list of the main things that 7.1 does not have that 7.0 does:
Secondary navigation option
Search bar in header
Parallax
Gallery blocks
Cover pages
Multiple heading fonts
Anchor links
If you’re starting a new website, I would suggest starting with 7.1 unless you need / want one of the above functionalities.
If you already have a 7.0 website there is no need to re-create your whole site in 7.1! I just re-designed my site about a month ago and it’s still in 7.0 and I’m super happy with it. A big reason I didn’t move to 7.1 is because there is no way to transfer blog posts between the two versions yet. Squarespace has promised to keep the 7.0 version updated and has been with new e-commerce updates just recently!
Overall Squarespace 7.1 has some incredible improvements that I’m really excited about! They have said they are taking feedback and working on implementing changes still in the 7.1 platform as it grows, so I have no doubt all the needed features will be there in the near future.
Check out my line of Squarespace template designs in 7.0 and 7.1 here!
If you have any questions about the two or which you should be using feel free to reach out!
