Digital Cheat Sheet

The bread and butter of any kind of college experience is writing papers. Some get off with relatively few, but more often than not people end up writing dozens of papers throughout their time in school. Most essay prompts are as stated "the student is to write: 'x' number of pages in 12-size, type Times New Roman font, double-spaced". Occasionally some teachers will deviate from the formula, but more often than not that is the standard and accepted font, but why?

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In the last year or so the market for web browsers has exploded. More work and advertising are being put into them and adoption rates are starting to pick up for new web browsers. Microsoft's Internet Explorer, Mozilla's Firefox, Google's Chrome, and Apple's Safari are starting to become the most important applications on a computer (Yes, I'm deliberately ignoring Opera). With more of our computer taking place in the cloud on websites like Gmail, Yahoo mail, Flickr, Facebook, Hulu, and Twitter having a competent, fast web browser is essential. Google has made inroads this year with their Google Chrome browser and Apple's Safari remains a favorite among Mac users, but it appears that Mozilla's Firefox has been slipping in the previous versions. While adoption is up over Internet Explorer, in terms of speed and mindshare Firefox has been falling behind.

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I have been requested to review the two best blogging platforms on the web by a few of my readers. Since this website is done on Squarespace I figured that any kind of review I did would be more rigged than an Iranian election. I use Squarespace and I do not think I could ever go back to Wordpress save an attack of exploding penguins on Squarespace’s highly secure data centers. So, that aside, it is time for my comparison.

Interface:

Wordpress and Squarespace both have vastly different interface layouts. Wordpress is more of the traditional static webpage layout with you being about to customize it to your heart’s content. Squarespace on the other hand uses AJAX controls that allow you to drag and drop segments of your website. Everything your do is in real-time and on the actual webpage itself. Squarespace’s interface is not for everyone. While being able to drag and drop sections of you website is excellent, you have to dig a little bit to get into the actually HTML and CSS of the webpage. That being said, I have not had the desire to really customize the HTML of my webpage yet, but in the future I see that this feature will be useful.

Themes:

Themes is where Wordpress beats Squarespace hands down. Wordpress has hundreds upon hundreds of themes that you can download (Often for free) and apply to your website. If you so desired you can purchase premium Wordpress themes from professional design companies. Although somewhat initially limited, Squarespace has the nice ability to have a live preview of whatever theme you are applying and the built-in themes are quite stunning. Squarespace’s lack of downloadable themes is a little disappointing, but that is one of the prices you pay for the service.

Plugins

Actually another thing Wordpress overwhelms Squarespace is the plethora of plugins that you can use. While Squarespace does not with plugins, it does have an extremely nice set of features including social network integration, sharing features, top-notch statistics, and much more. While Wordpress does have hundreds upon hundreds of plugins most of them from my experience are duplicates or those of a lesser quality. Having played with the plugins I can say that I still prefer Squarespace because everything in it just “works”. That being said, however, there are still tons of nice plugins on Wordpress that add functionality to your website. I guess what I am saying is that plugins are not as necessary on Squarespace because just about anything would could possibly want to do is already integrated or easily addable to your website.

Publishing Content:

Submitting content is pretty much the same on both services. Wordpress, being open-source, is supported by more external editors like the iPhone, but Squarespace has been very proactive in this field and will be releasing their own iPhone application for mobile publishing. Speaking of mobile publishing both services allow you to publish via email, which is a nice feature few people (including myself) forget about. Both services have fully-featured text editors that easily help you to format text and add in media from around the web (Or your own storage). That being said I like both editors. Squarespace’s has a focused, tight look, but Wordpress has an open feel to it.

Hosting:

Web hosting is where Squarespace shines. Squarespace’s architecture is excellent and they actually use server-side virtualization to allow your website to scale in case you are “dugg” or mentioned on Leo’s Laporte’s “TWiT Live”. Wordpress, being open-source, does have any a default web host. With Wordpress your website’s stability and reliability depends on your web host. Some hosts are better than other so you are going to have to do your own careful research. There is a Wordpress.com where you can use the Wordpress blogging platform, but it is rather limited unless you want to pay extra for the hosting. I would compare the prices of the two, but since Wordpress depends on your web host it is not really a fair comparison saying that Wordpress is “free”.

So Which One Should you use?

As I mentioned earlier, I use Squarespace and would never go back unless there was a seriously compelling reason to switch to Wordpress. I look at the Squarespace vs. Wordpress debate as really a Mac vs. PC comparison. Both have their own strength’s and weaknesses. For me, I appreciate having one, secure, tightly integrated service that provides me with all the options I want. That, being said Squarespace can be customized to your heart’s content, but it does not have the easy to install plugins that Wordpress has. Wordpress does, in theory, have an unlimited set of features you can add into it, but from my experience with it I just do not see that potential being realized. So I guess the bigger question is “should I use Squarespace?” and my response to that is for you to click that Squarespace link right next you this article (www.squarespace.com Use promo code “digitalcheastsheet”) and try out the service yourself. They have a fifteen day free trial you can play with WITHOUT having to type in a credit card. I suggest you do at least try it before you buy and just keep in mind that everything in Squarespace is completely Wordpress/Blogger-friendly. All of your content can be easily imported and exported, but I personally don’t think you’ll want to go back after trying out Squarespace. I love the service and have had a lot of fun (yes, pure unadulterated fun) creating my website because of the ease of use. If you don’t like Squarespace you can always go right back to using Wordpress, Blogger, Lifejournal, or whatever you use.