Video hosting & organization in Squarespace!
What's inside this post: Hide
📌 Pin it!
I’m just gonna say it: it’s about damn time. Right?! 😂
Squarespace has just announced –scratch that– they’ve just dropped a huge feature-bomb on us– that they now allow us to host video directly on our sites!
Before you jump up & down though, as with all new things there are pros and cons to this, so let’s dive in before you start building your new video library!
Creating a video library on Squarespace
Do I have to pay for hosting on Squarespace?
Short answer: no.
Realistic answer: yes.
You can upload up to 30 minutes of HD video for free, but after you reach that threshold, you will have to buy/add a Members Area plan that includes hosting time in increments of 5 hours, 20 hours, or 50 hours.
The current pricing can be found near the bottom of the page, but Members Area plans start at $10/monthly (5 hours of video hosting), and go up from there. Of course you always save a little when you pay annually.
Work around: use YouTube or Vimeo
If you want to use the new feature but don’t want to pay for yet another thing ––and you don’t need to lock off the content behind a paywall (ie: subscription), then host your videos on YouTube or Vimeo and paste in the share link, just like you’re used to in Video blocks.
Vimeo does have paid plans, but you can ‘privately’ host videos on YouTube if you mark the video as “Unlisted” which will keep it out of the search results, but still allow you to embed & share your videos outside of YouTube.
“Private” videos are literally private to you, so make sure you don’t use that setting if you plan to put the video on your Squarespace website.
How do I make a video library?
This part is easy! And it works similarly to the kind of set up & organization that you’re used to in the 7.1 shop, with drag & drop categories & category nesting. No tags though, oddly…
To start you go to the main Pages menu and click the ➕ to add a new page. Look for the new Video Collection page type, which for now has that fancy little blue “NEW” label on it to grab your attention.
Adding videos to the new collection page
Once you click that, it’ll ask you to set it up the way you normally would, by choosing a Page Title and then you can get started.
It will pre-load a bunch of demo content for you, which you can easily delete. (And don’t worry that demo content doesn’t count against your 30 minute limit of free video hosting.)
When the demo content is gone, you can click the ➕ from the Video page you just created, to create a new entry in this collection. This part will feel pretty familiar if you’ve been on Squarespace for a while now, and if not, it’s still fairly simple.
Want to see it in action? Check out the video below!
Final thoughts & overview
Here’s what I think about this new feature so far: it’s a GREAT start, but it does lack some things I know people will want (myself included). Things to note…
PROS:
Easy to add new videos, whether uploading directly to your site or adding from YouTube or Vimeo
Easy to organize the videos
has nested categories like the shop collection page
displays the video at the top of it’s own page, full screen height
a minimally designed video player has everything most people want, and removes the “junk/clutter” to viewers can focus on the video without distractions
description area does seem to have near-full rich text formatting options
linked text, bold, italic, alignment, bulleted or numbered lists, indentation, and font size, etc.
CONS:
You can’t add videos via other services, outside of Squarespace YouTube, or Vimeo
Loom users (etc), I’m sorry! It doesn’t work with Loom/anything-else videos yet!
You can’t add additional content blocks to the area below the video
image blocks, summary blocks, buttons, etc
No tags? I mean, …really? Why would we not have this AND categories?
