How to move your domain & launch your new site on Squarespace v7.1
If you already have a website on Squarespace 7.0, but you want to move it to 7.1, it probably feels very overwhelming, doesn’t it? It doesn’t have to be!
It can actually be simpler than you’d think and launching is even easier. Let’s dive in!
How to export or move your 7.0 content to 7.1
Yes, I said export. There is a way, but it’ll cost ya.
Literally. It costs about $200 via this Chrome extension (unaffiliated with Squarespace). It’s got some quirks, but ultimately it’s likely the fastest way to move your content over if you have large collection pages like a blog you’ve been on for years 🙋🏻♀️ or a large shop with many products.
Moving your content over, manually.
You can literally just open your current site, grab all of your text via copy-and-paste, section by section. It’s quicker than you think, for smaller websites with less than 10-15 pages (total, counting linked & unlinked pages).
⚠️ PLEASE do yourself a favor & take this opportunity to re-save & re-name all of your images with web-ready file sizes & SEO-minded names, so you won’t have to re-write all of them as up upload and you won’t have a slow-loading website.
Google penalizes sites with a lower ranking for both unintelligible file names (ie: IMG_5409_edit5-final.jpg) and slower-loading sites (usually because there are lots of very large images)!
For more on Squarespace SEO Best Practices, check out these posts here:
If you need help figuring out how to style the new 7.1 site, find out how to build your 7.1 site fast using this pro secret and get the link to Squarespace’s SEO checklist, juuust to be sure you remembered everything.
How to switch from the old Squarespace site to the new one
Okay, all of your content has been moved over. You’ve implemented some basic SEO, uploaded all of your images and moved all your copy. You’ve styled the site, and checked the way it looks on multiple device sizes. Went through it methodically clicking every button to make sure everything does what it’s supposed to. Right?
When you’re ready to launch the new site, here are the steps.
Upgrade your new website design to a paid plan.
(Yes, even though your old one is still on one too; hang in there, we’ll get to that too.)Go back to your old website design, navigate to Settings, then select Domains
Scroll to the bottom of the Domains panel and select Move Domain To Another Site
In the popup, choose the site you want to move the domain to, then confirm.
Go back to the old site & cancel the current plan for it.
Reach out to Squarespace about any prorated refunds. At least for monthly payers, they do not refund any portion of your monthly payment (as of posting date).DONE!
Your new site will likely be public within about 30 minutes, but it may jump back & forth between an owner-only login/access page and the new design. That jumping back & forth should level out & be only showing your new site within 2-4 hours. Though Squarespace says it can take between 24 – 72 hours, I’ve never actually had it take that long.A more professional work around for this is to wait to cancel your old site until the new one is ready, and put up a Cover Page as the home page for the old one, saying “This site is under construction” or “New design launching soon!” –You get the idea. 😉
(Click to enlarge the photos below & hover over the image for any instructions)
That’s all there is to it!
The launching part is easy, right? Not too hard. It’s moving all the content that’s time consuming. Think of it this way:
You can use this as an opportunity to condense & update your content as you move things over to the new design! Then your website will be even more relevant to your viewers, which Google will definitely appreciate & reward you for.
Plus if you’re following my tips to implement basic SEO & appropriate web-ready image sizes for your whole website, from the ground up, you’ll be more likely to get better Google rankings anyway! Win-win!
💥 NEED A BIT MORE HELP?
This post goes into a lot more detail & helps you deal with broken links when you switch site designs & move your domain.
But, I’m not a designer!
That’s okay! You can pick a template from my shop & customize it however you want. You’ll look like a pro in no time. 😉
