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Make a Linktree Or Beacons Page with Squarespace

Are you looking for a way to funnel users to your newest content, latest product, or new project? Do you need simple but adaptive landing page to drive web traffic from your presence on social media sites like TikTok, Instagram, LinkedIn, or Facebook? Don't want to deal with the hassle of updating your links on each social media page every time you have a new resource to share or campaign to promote? Having a single, one-stop web page where visitors can land to find everything they may need know about you can be handy to use across social media websites.

Businesses, influencers, entrepreneurs, activists, hobbyists and other individuals may use a service like Linktree or Beacons where they can dump a list of links onto one page and then just share their Linktree or Beacons profile. Even though there's a free tier for each of these services, you will need to subscribe to one of their paid tiers to have additional features such as more robust customization, additional pages, or access to in-depth analytics on how your links are performing and where your visitors are going.

If you already pay for hosting of your own website - like I do through Squarespace - why pay more money for something when you can quickly set up through the WYSIWYG editor for no additional monthly fee? By the end of this article, you'll have an adaptive web page with the same functionality of a Linktree page that will not only come in at no additional cost, but you'll also have access to all the analytics for the traffic you drive as well!

Follow the steps below to build your own Linktree clone. Please note: I am using Squarespace 7.0 or higher with the Bedford family of templates for these steps.

Making the Page

1) Log in to your Squarespace dashboard and click the "Pages" section.

We’ll only be working in the Pages section.

2) On the left side, scroll down to the "Not Linked" section and click the plus sign to add a new unlinked web page

3) Under the Layout section, click "About" and then select the "Vertical" option. This will start out with a simple centered layout that gives an image block, a text block, social media block, and some spacers for visual placement. You can start with just a blank template page and build you own if you wish, but I found that using the Vertical About layout template was quickest for me to get a Linktree clone up and running.

Click the plus sign “+” then the “About” layout option for quick setup.

Choose the “Vertical” option - it will show up best for mobile users after setup.

4) Name the new page on the left side panel to something unique/descriptive so you'll know what the page is for (I used "philslinks" for this example).

Give your new page a name.

5) Hover you mouse over the page on the left side and click the settings cog. On the Page Settings screen that pops up, give your new webpage a short, memorable but unique URL slug or just leave it as the default of whatever you named your page in Step 4. Click "Close" for the Page Settings menu

We’ll need to adjust a setting for the page.

Change the URL slug if you wish and click “Close”

6) Now's the time to build out your web page! Hover your mouse over the right pane and click the "Edit" button to enter into the Page Editor.

Click “Edit” to get started building your own Linktree

7) Here you can start customizing your page to your liking. I have the basic areas outlined in the template below. I recommend leaving the default spacers and uploading a custom image (your profile picture, your business logo, etc.) for the Image Block.

Layout described in Step 7.

8) After uploading your custom image, I suggest going into the settings for the Image Block and turning off the caption in the Content tab and changing the shape from Original to Shape (default is a circle) in the Design tab. You can also play around with animations if you wish in the Design tab as well, but leaving everything else as the default is fine.

9) Scrolling down you will see a default text block sandwiched between two Spacer Blocks centered on the page. I suggest deleting these, moving the Social Media block to be just below your custom image, and adding a Text Block and however many Button Blocks you wish to use for links.

Delete these three blocks: the top Spacer Block, the Text Block, and the bottom Spacer Block.

Move the Social Block to be below your Image Block, add a Text Block and Button Blocks

10) The buttons can be edited to display custom text and a custom link that, when clicked, will take the visitor to the specified URL.

Customize your Button Blocks

11) When done editing your buttons and getting your website the way you want, click "Save" to exit out the Page Editor and you're done!

That’s it!

Great job! You've just set up your own personal Linktree. All that's needed to do now is copy your new page's URL and paste it into your social media profiles. Whenever you want to add a new link in the future, you will only need to add a new button in the Page Editor from the Squarespace dashboard on a computer or through the Squarespace app of your iOS or Android device.

There's much more you can do to customize your page to make it look flashier, but that involves advanced topics like modifying the CSS of your website among other things that are beyond the scope of this tutorial. That I'll leave as an exercise for the reader. For now, farewell and happy linking!

Why Everyone Should Have a Website

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I’ve had this idea kicking around in my head for a while, and the more I think about it, the more it makes sense: every person should have a website. Not just every company, organization, company, entrepreneur, politician, athlete, or superstar: Every. Person.

Why should you, and everyone else for that matter, have a website? Read on to find out.

Stake Your Claim

It doesn’t matter whether you’re wanting to sell a product or service, building your own personal brand, or just want a place to write a short bio about yourself. In the ever-growing realm of the Internet, it’s best to stake your claim to a piece of real estate on it. The way to do that is to have your own website. From your own website, you can then branch out and link to every other instance of your online presence (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, Tumblr, etc.) where others can find you.

Take Control & Independence

With a personal website, a person can control their story and how they want to tell it. This removes the opportunity for someone else to tell that person’s story instead, which will eventually happen. Before I get too far into this: do not think that only having a Facebook page will work. It may be easy to get one and maintain, but that is not a website. A person fully control a Facebook page and who may be able to see it if the page is updated. Facebook’s algorithms take care of that - and charges if a person wants to “boost” their post in order to reach more people. This is basically just living in an apartment rent-free on Facebook’s lot, but Facebook has the control over who goes into the complex and who can go up to any person’s particular floor or room. If someone wants prime real estate, that’s out on the Internet with a personal website. With a personal website, both can be had - a Facebook page to help build community and a website where the person can put anything else. The key concept here is having independence so a person is not tied down to one platform.

I want to hit more on the control aspect: someone with their own website can control how public or private they want to be. I play on the more public side with my website, linking just about any social network account I have at the bottom of my page, and taking blog posts and pictures about as personal as I want. However, people can also have a more private view with their websites by putting as little personal information or thoughts as they wish. Please do not confuse my insistence on people owning their own website with people also needing to constantly market their website or freely share their personal lives - I’m not advocating for that. I’m advocating that just like people need to have a place to physically live in the real world, they also need a place to live on the Internet.

Building is Easy & Cheap to Start

It has not been easier to make your own website. Unless you have absolutely no access to the Internet (in which case, how are you reading this post?) there are few reasons to not have a website. There are plenty of services and tools available online that let you build and maintain your own website with no little or no experience. Hosting services are available for free - like Wordpress, Wix, or About.me - or very little cost depending on the types of features or capabilities you want. No website design or previous coding experience is required to build your site, either. Some services, like Squarespace or Wix, provide simple and easy to use templates that you can choose from to get your website up and running quickly. These services also use a drag-and-drop “what you see is what you get” (WYSIWYG) interface, where you can further customize your site. The tools will only get better from here.

What Are You Waiting For?

Are you still contemplating on starting a website? Why? Judgement from others? Insecurities in your technical ability to design and build a website or afraid you may not be creative (or interesting) enough to fill that site with content? Who cares! Just go do and stake your claim. You can work out the rest with time.

Still have questions or need some motivation? Feel free to post them in the comments down below or send me a DM or reply on any of the social media sites linked at the bottom of this page and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.