Building A Website (Without a Template) Is Hard

This website took over a year of hard work to complete.

“Wait, what?” some of you might be muttering to yourself right now. “It says ‘Made with Squarespace’ right there at the bottom of every page. Couldn’t you have just plugged content in by following three easy steps or something and then published the website?”

Yeah, for sure. I bet it’s super easy. For the price they charge, it better be too.

But have you looked over those provided website templates? They’re all the same. The only differences between them seem to be the primary color being used and where the menu navigation bar sits. But what I found to be the real issue with their templates is built in the presumption you’re someone doing, promoting, or creating one specific task or product. Either you’re a small business selling your artisan goods or you’re an audio engineer hosting an ongoing podcast. But you can’t be both. You’ve got to be a square peg going into a square hole or a round peg going into a round hole. Squarespace isn’t built to easily allow a square peg to fit into a round hole. Meaning if you’re a fellow “jack of all trades, master of none” like myself, as usual, you find yourself screwed yet again.

Unless you’re willing to do some hard work by going off template.

While I feel Squarespace does a lot to ease the process of making a website (linking the website to Twitter and Instagram, crafting and posting blogs, uploading images), the process of designing pages is hellish. Many, many, MANY times I stormed away from the computer, cursing under my breath in frustration. In laying out pages, dragging and dropping an image never ended up placing the image were I wanted to put it. Typically with as little as two clicks, I consistently found myself messing up and destroying all my work from within the last hour. And with no general, all-usage undo button, it was back to square one in designing a page.

I wish I could say I learned some tricks or life hacks along the way for using Squarespace. But it was only through leaning hard onto the square peg did it go through the round hole. Building this website never got easier to do at any point. I have little hope that’ll change in the future either.

But when entering the final stages of building my website through sheer force of will, I realized I’d made something that was a true reflection of myself. Being a “jack of all trades, master of none” is difficult. The path to follow is never clear, with an infinite amount of options to peruse. And that’s presuming you have the focused clarity to make an informed decision on which path to take next.

The only way I was ever going to build a website that was a true representation of myself and everything I do was to go off template.

Because I’ve never been able to introduce myself by saying, “Hi, I’m Patrick and I’m INSERT JUST ONE PROFESSIONAL TITLE HERE.” While the struggle of getting each page’s content to line up perfectly was part of the problem, it was getting the content of my work to fit perfectly into sections that was equally, and probably truthfully, the most frustrating part. For as long as I can remember, I’ve only been able to achieve my artistic goals by going off template with trying to get every square peg in my life into a corresponding round hole, which is always hard, exhausting, and time-consuming work. Perhaps the reason why I’ve always had a hard time in the beginning with my work and projects is I’ve started them by trying to use a default template first.

Now, don’t get me wrong. That next project will be hard work. But hopefully for that next thing I won’t get hung up trying to use the template or make it all fit perfectly, both visually and contextually. Because even if you’re able to use a template, it’s the work itself that’ll always be the truly challenging, grueling task to complete.

But unlike this website, maybe it won’t take over a year to complete.