I've been lazy. :-P
Not really. I've been so involved in a lot of new learning lately and you know how I love learning. At home, at work, personally. So I've let my personal website slide, flounder, drown, whatever metaphor pleases.
On a whim I decided to try out SquareSpace to freshen up my portfolio and combine it with my blog. I'd see if it was really as intuitive as advertised.
It's not.
Maybe because I'm a web designer and UX professional I expected too much. As usual I've discovered that the way I think is not way others do (and I treasure that). Maybe it's because I'm not a spring chicken, or I'm from the west, or I'm a woman, or some such ridiculous stereotype. Maybe I know to too much. Nonetheless, after more than an afternoon, I had a few basic pages.
It took me three tries to understand the structure and create a site. For some reason I kept ending up back at the very beginning. I would have loved to see an information architecture to understand the relationships of the pages. I had to search for definitions of their labeling so I could choose the right types of page. I'm still not completely clear. I wonder how much user research and testing with real people was done. Maybe it was design by themselves for themselves with the hope it works for someone. Common.
Discontinuing hosting from one host and attaching my domain name to the new site was a bit of a run-around. They each said, "see the other site's help page". Though, I will give them kudos for a nice Help site.
I do wish it was fully accessible to persons with disabilities because I care deeply about the issue. When I asked about it, they wanted me to teach them how to make it accessible. -sigh- If only they had thought about that from the start.
Wonder if this is their -minimum viable product-. Wonder if it will be difficult to customize. Wonder if I can make it work.
Still, it makes the possibility of creating one's own website a little easier for some people. It meets my goals for now. The design I chose is clean and minimal and not over designed.
And, really, having decent content to put out there is what's most important.